Momentum Minstries

Acts 21:1-16

2012-01-30T07:30:00.001-06:00

On to Jerusalem
1 After we had torn ourselves away from them, we put out to sea and sailed straight to Kos. The next day we went to Rhodes and from there to Patara. 2 We found a ship crossing over to Phoenicia, went on board and set sail. 3 After sighting Cyprus and passing to the south of it, we sailed on to Syria. We landed at Tyre, where our ship was to unload its cargo. 4 We sought out the disciples there and stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. 5 When it was time to leave, we left and continued on our way. All of them, including wives and children, accompanied us out of the city, and there on the beach we knelt to pray. 6 After saying goodbye to each other, we went aboard the ship, and they returned home.
7 We continued our voyage from Tyre and landed at Ptolemais, where we greeted the brothers and sisters and stayed with them for a day. 8 Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. 9 He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied.

10 After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11 Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’”

12 When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. 13 Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” 14 When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”

15 After this, we started on our way up to Jerusalem. 16 Some of the disciples from Caesarea accompanied us and brought us to the home of Mnason, where we were to stay. He was a man from Cyprus and one of the early disciples.

Dig DeeperOne of the myths that I have discovered as it relates to marathon runners is that you can reach a certain level of conditioning where running a marathon becomes easy and doesn’t hurt at all. Although I would agree that you can certainly attain a level of fitness where being able to finish a marathon is not really in doubt, no runners that I know ever get to a point where finishing a marathon is easy. No matter how strong and well-trained you are, running 26.2 miles (42 k) is going to be physically unpleasant in one way or another, if you are running at your maximum speed potential for that distance. Yet every time there is a marathon, you see hundreds and even thousands line up at the starting line and undertake the adventure. They have learned that their commitment to undertake the race outweighs the physical pain and discomfort and so they don’t allow the negative to deter them from reaching their goal.

This same principle can be seen in many different ways in life whether it is a young student who undertakes a long and rigorous course of study because they feel called to a particular field in life, or a soldier who dutifully charges into battle knowing that he will likely die because his sense of duty and honor outweigh the normal human instinct to preserve one’s life. All around us we can see examples of people accepting varying levels of sacrifice for a cause that they consider higher than the sacrifice itself.

Yet, as a minister, I can’t tell you how many times I have sat down with someone who is despondent because they have been doing everything they knew to do and been as faithful as they could and yet they have found their life in Christ to be full of much more trial, struggle, and sacrifice than they could have imagined. Underneath the surface they have mistakenly accepted an erroneous belief that following God’s will in their life should lead them away from trials and into a life of perfect peace and even ease. If that’s the case, though, then Jesus and Paul had no idea of how to follow God’s will in their lives. Jesus perfectly followed God’s will and Paul is the best example this side of Jesus of a human committing their life to God’s will, and they both constantly ran into rejection and persecution.

It appears that following God’s will often leads us straight into trouble not away from it. But trusting in God brings unexplainable peace and joy despite those trials. This is what Paul knew well and lived out consistently in his life. He had died to himself and was completely committed to following God’s will wherever it took and regardless of how personally uncomfortable it might be. That is why in the face of guaranteed suffering and persecution Paul didn’t run the other way but set his face towards it marched towards God’s will despite the consequences. He had learned that dedication to God’s will far outweighed the negative consequences of being so devoted to his God. But Acts is not a book about Paul. It is all about the spread of the gospel through the power of the Spirit so we shouldn’t be caught up in thinking what an incredible guy Paul was (although he certainly was pretty amazing), but we should instead look at Paul’s resolve in moments like the one described in this passage and realize that Luke’s point was that this was the kind of resolve it took to spread the gospel as radically and quickly as it spread in the first century. That was what it took then and it is still what it will take today.

Paul knew that the road ahead of him was rife with suffering and opposition but that didn’t deter him from setting his face towards Jerusalem just as Jesus had set his face toward the same city despite knowing that he would die there (Lk. 9:51). Paul’s fate would not be the same as Jesus’ once he reached Jerusalem but his motivation was the same. He was locked into doing the will of God and would not let the prospect of discomfort keep him from embracing that with his life.

The church in Tyre had likely been planted by disciples who fled Jerusalem following the persecution that broke out after Paul (Saul) had approved of the stoning death of Stephen. It seems that Paul did not know this Christian community but had perhaps only vaguely heard of them as Luke tells us that they sought out the disciples, using a specific term (aneurisko) that referred to finding something after searching diligently for it. Once there Paul stayed with them for seven days waiting for his next ship. While there it appears that some brothers there felt that the Spirit gave them insight into the suffering that Paul would face in Jerusalem. Through this revelation of the Spirit, they interpreted this to mean that Paul should perhaps not go to Jerusalem and pleaded with him to not go. There is a bit of irony in the probability that a church created by persecution initiated by Paul in Jerusalem was now urging the very same man to stay away from Jerusalem where he might face his own suffering and persecution. What Luke is making clear is that Paul well knew what lie ahead of him. The Spirit made sure that it was clear to all what Paul faced but the Spirit had also made clear to Paul that this was his calling in Christ, so no matter how many brothers and sisters tried to lovingly protect Paul, he knew what he had to do. He was more committed to the Spirit’s call in his life than he was self-preservation or a life free of trouble. In fact Paul feared no evil even though he knew that God’s will often traveled directly through the valley of the shadow of death.

After being lovingly escorted out of Tyre by his family of believers there, Paul prayed with them and continued on his journey, spending a day with disciples in Ptolemais. That may seem like a short time and it is, but I can attest that through the power of the Spirit that brings us into supernatural fellowship with other believers in distant lands, you can grow very close in heart and spirit with brothers and sisters as you travel through their area despite spending just a few hours with them.

After his brief stint in Ptolemais Paul continued on towards Jerusalem and eventually landed at the house of Philip the evangelist in Caesarea. Philip had been one of the original six men apportioned by the Spirit for benevolent work in the church (Acts 6:3-6). He had also spread the gospel in Samaria and the coastal plain of Judea and Caesarea (Acts 8:40). But that was around twenty years earlier so we can assume that Philip had stayed in Caesarea and been instrumental in building a church there. This possibly indicates that evangelists in the formative church planted churches and sometimes moved on to the next planting, but they also sometimes stayed put for long periods of time if that was the Spirit’s will. As we reunite with Philip we find him with four young daughters, probably all in their teenage years. All four had been given the miraculous gift through the Spirit of speaking God’s word by prophesying (This was a gift that was needed in the young church where the New Covenant Scriptures had yet to be completed and spread throughout the churches.)

After a few days with the disciples in Caesarea, Agabus arrived from Judea. He had two things lending credibility to the prophecy that he would give while there. The first was that he had just come from the Jerusalem area and he well knew the atmosphere in the city. The second was that he was already a respected prophet (Acts 11:28) who had prophesied the terrible famine that would strike the Roman world.

Agabus would deliver this prophecy in the fine tradition of the acted prophecy, a technique used often by the Old Testament prophets (for example: Isa. 20:2; Jer. 13:4-11; 19:1-15; Ezek. 4-5) and quite possibly by Jesus as he cleared the Temple and acted out God’s impending judgment and his authority to declare that judgment upon Jerusalem. Agabus tied himself up with Paul’s own belt to demonstrate what would happen to Paul in Jerusalem. It didn’t wind up happening precisely the way someone listening to Agabus that day might have guessed but prophecy rarely does work that way. The Jews would bind Paul up and he would be handed over to the Romans though and that was the point. Hard times lay ahead for Paul in Jerusalem.

These were deeply committed, God-fearing, Spirit-led Christians that listened to Agabus that day but they were also brothers and sisters that deeply loved and cared for Paul. On hearing such a frightening future for Paul, they wept and urged him to avoid Jerusalem. Surely Paul had suffered enough and what if he died there? What would that mean for those to whom Paul meant so much? Their love for him and concern that they would never see him again if he went to Jerusalem broke Paul’s heart for he cared for them just as deeply. But the threat of being bound in chains would not deter Paul. In fact, if the Spirit was leading him to his own death, then Paul had already accepted that long ago. He had died already (Gal. 2:20) and the life he lived was all about Christ and the gospel so physical death would not intimidate Paul one bit. He was fully committed to the heart that Jesus had prayed for in Gethsemane; God’s will be done. And if that will led him to die in the same city that his Lord had died then sobeit.

Throughout the book of Acts Luke consistently gives us the picture of an ever-advancing gospel despite the constant opposition and persecution that Jesus said would be the fate of his people. Jesus knew that his death awaited him and yet he resolutely marched straight towards that end so that God’s kingdom might be advanced. What happened there in Jerusalem through his death and resurrection gave birth to a people that were just as willing to march to theit own deaths so that glory could be brought to good, his will be done, and his kingdom advanced. The question that we must constantly ask ourselves is whether or not we truly stand in that tradition. Are we willing to imitate Paul as he imitated Christ? We may not be faced with our own physical deaths but it can be amazing how tightly we cling to our own lives even when the stakes are much less can’t it?

Devotional Thought
When we really commit ourselves to following the Spirit we will quickly find out that this will be a life for our ultimate benefit but it will not be one of comfort and ease. Are you truly willing to be led by the Spirit even if he leads you to do things you’d rather not do? He may not be calling you to suffer in Jerusalem but maybe it’s something as unpleasant as sharing your faith with someone in a situation that is extremely uncomfortable for you. Are you willing to go where the Spirit leads?

Acts 20:28-38

2012-01-25T09:48:00.001-06:00

28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God,[a] which he bought with his own blood.[b] 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.

32 “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 33 I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. 35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

36 When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. 37 They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. 38 What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.

Dig Deeper
When I was in high school I was privileged enough to be able to drive my own car. Technically it belonged to my parents but they pretty much let it be my car. I drove it and had total access to it but I had to pay for gas and otherwise take care of it. My car was a 1976 dark green Dodge Aspen and if you know anything about cars you know that this means that this beast was about the size of the Queen Mary and was made of solid steel. If you hit something with that car you would want to get out and see what destruction you had wrought on the other item but there was little danger of doing anything to mess that car up. In short, this thing was what we called a “beater.” You couldn’t really do any serious damage to it but it was such an old ugly car that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Because of that I didn’t mind letting anyone drive it. I wasn’t that concerned. Anyone could drive that car without worrying much about having to be super careful or damaging it because it just wasn’t worth much.

In contrast however, a few years ago a friend asked me to drive their very new and fairly expensive car for them for a weekend. To be honest I was quite nervous the entire weekend. When I drove, I was sure to drive extra carefully. I didn’t want to bring anything extra into the car for fear of spilling something and I took the care to even clean the bottoms of my shoes before swinging my feet into the vehicle itself. Throughout the weekend I went to great pains to make sure that I cared for that car because it was so valuable and meant so much to the owner. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth when it came to my old Aspen.

Behind these farewell words to the Ephesian elders lies something of that concept. Paul had put a great deal of effort, care, and tears into his ministry with them. He toiled and gave every ounce of energy and care he had because they were precious to him. He was careful in everything that he did and now he was urging the elders to take that same care and treat the congregation with the same love and tears that he had. But it was not because of how much they meant to him, although they meant a great deal. Paul understood how expensive and how valuable God’s flock was and knew that leaders should care for the flock very carefully because of how much it meant to God.

There is a great deal of shepherd imagery throughout the Old Testament where God is held up as the perfect shepherd (Psalm 23 for example), but he regularly calls the leaders of Israel to shepherd his flocks and tend for them well. In light of that call God often used his prophets to denounce judgment upon those leaders for not shepherding his people in a loving or selfless fashion. Standing most clearly behind the imagery and language that Paul uses here in his exhortation of the Ephesian elders was Ezekiel’s warning to Israel’s shepherds: “Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally” (Ezek. 34:2-4). Israel had failed to Shepherd God’s people and he didn’t take kindly to that, so as shepherds of God’s family in the new covenant, Paul warned these elders to guard the flock.

Their motivation for this watchful care was simple. The sheer value of the flock to God was inestimable. God had paid the highest price imaginable for his people; his very own blood, or more specifically, the blood of Jesus Christ. God had purchased his family at the steepest of prices and therefore expected those that he made overseers of the flock to handle with special care. The flock was no beater car but God’s prized possession and he wanted them shepherded with the same care and concern that he himself would love his people.

This was such a vital concern because Paul knew that savage wolves would come from within the flock and ravage it with selfish leadership and false teaching (Matt. 7:15-19; 2 Peter 2:1-22). Paul had given his blood, sweat and tears for three years, knowing that this was not just a possibility within the flock but a probability. No shepherd is above having wolves attack; no flock is safe. Sadly, it appears a possibility that at least some of the leaders standing there that day did not heed Paul’s words and may have even become wolves themselves. Just a few years later Paul would write Timothy, who was leading the church in Ephesus by then, on how to deal with the false teachers that had arisen. He goes on to instruct Timothy on how to choose elders and other leaders well, quite possibly because some of these very elders had abandoned the truth of the gospel and taken up teaching things that they did not even understand (1 Tim. 1:6-7). Not long after that, John wrote and praised the church for their dedication in testing false and true teachers and having stayed clean from false teaching, yet he did go on to rebuke them for having become unloving and passionate about their Christian faith (Rev. 2:1-6). By the close of the first century, however, the church leader Ignatius would write and affirm that Ephesus had indeed repented and had regained their first love and passion as well as still holding firm to the true gospel. It had taken some challenges, but they had learned Paul’s lessons well.

Paul knew the importance of holding to the word of God as the standard of obedience and the acid test for God’s people because it was the only thing that would give them the inheritance of being God’s family. Paul’s words here are not all that different from Peter when he urged that elders should “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away” (1 Pet. 5:2-4).

But Paul’s words were not empty. The call to be such careful shepherds had weight precisely because Paul could point to the way that he had carried himself among them as a shepherd. His life echoed Peter’s exhortation. Paul had shepherded them because he was willing and full of the love of God, never “pursuing dishonest gain” or leading for his own advantage as the shepherds of Ezekiel 34 had done.

Everything about Paul’s ministry exhibited love for others and he was confident in reminding them of that. He was confident in calling them to that way of life as their example. He had lived the life of Christ among them and could now, with a clean conscience, urge them to that same dedication in life. But Paul was no cock-eyed optimist. He understood that all of this was hard work. That is exactly why he felt the need to call them together one last time and urge them to keep their eye on the ball. Ministry and leadership must never become about the leaders being exalted, honored, or taken care. Shepherds are not in the business of shepherding so that the sheep can make the shepherd’s life easier. Shepherds are caretakers. The minute the focus of ministry is taken off of the sheep and put onto the shepherd is the minute it ceases to be godly ministry. But we must be on guard constantly. Poor shepherds don’t just come in the form of blatant false teachers and those that seek to become rich on the backs of members. Self-focus in ministry is usually far more subtle than that. It begins when we start to notice all the things we lay down and the many things we do to care for the sheep and we start to expect that the sheep start showing a little gratitude and appreciation for how difficult and demanding shepherding can be. The moment we start down that road as shepherds, Satan has gained a foothold of which he will not let go easily.

For that very reason, Paul reminded them of the words of Jesus himself that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” This sentence doesn’t come from any of the gospels but must have been a well known oral memory or teaching of Jesus (or it possibly could have been something that Jesus said directly to Paul during their initial confrontation in Damascus). This principle should not be reduced to some pithy Christmas-time saying, though. Paul’s direct context was that of ministry. It is all about giving of our lives and not just receiving. Guarding the flock means that leaders stand ever-vigilant against the subtle temptress of getting just a little back in reward for their work.

As a true testament to Paul’s deep relationships with the elders in Ephesus was the tears that were shed after his words and their final prayer together. Paul had shed many tears with them and for them in ministry and now it was their turn to weep as they realized that they would not see him again. It was Paul’s deep and emotional relationship with them, in fact ,that allowed him to warn them so sternly and straightforwardly. Without the relationship his words would have seemed biting and bitter indeed but they embraced it as loving words of their brother because he had loved them so well. We must never forget, however, that the tears in a relationship don’t come easy. They must be worked for. Perhaps we will begin to see more shepherds in our churches today of the type that Paul called them to be when we start to see more tears.

Devotional Thought
How much effort do you put into your relationships within the body of Christ? Does it come even close to the level of tears? What would it look like for you to put that kind of effort into building deep relationships within the church family? What would be the rewards if you did put that type of effort in?

Acts 20:13-27

2012-01-23T07:15:00.001-06:00

13 We went on ahead to the ship and sailed for Assos, where we were going to take Paul aboard. He had made this arrangement because he was going there on foot. 14 When he met us at Assos, we took him aboard and went on to Mitylene. 15 The next day we set sail from there and arrived off Chios. The day after that we crossed over to Samos, and on the following day arrived at Miletus. 16 Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus to avoid spending time in the province of Asia, for he was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem, if possible, by the day of Pentecost.
17 From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church. 18 When they arrived, he said to them: “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. 19 I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. 20 You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. 21 I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.

22 “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. 23 I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. 24 However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.

25 “Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. 26 Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. 27 For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.

Dig Deeper
Now days you can walk into virtually any Christian bookstore and find shelves full of books on how to grow a church, build a ministry, and be as successful as possible as a leader of a church. A vast majority of these books are packed with inspirational ideas and concepts of how businesses or groups become successful in our world. They then give example after example of how you can follow a few easy steps to build your own successful ministry in a similar manner. They usually contain several good spiritual tips and reminders but at the heart of most of these types of books are rules on strong leadership, developing tight organizational skills, and having and communicating a clear mission and vision for your church or group. Some of these books are so focused on following a corporate model of success that you can read them and barely notice that they are spiritually minded books at all. They might have a veneer of Christian faith on them but the principles are almost entirely built on what it takes to be successful in the Western world in the realm of business.

Paul’s ministry success stands in stark opposition to these trendy type of books that are full of corporate wisdom and wit. I tend to wonder that if Paul wrote a book on ministry and how to build one that was released today it wouldn’t be very successful in the current climate of following the latest inspirational trend that will help you to attain explosive growth in your own church. Paul well knew that Jesus said that his church would be identified and built on the simple act of loving one another (John 13:34-35). That is not to say that things like having a plan and holding to true doctrines, beliefs, and practices aren’t incredibly important. A church must be built on truth in Christ, but then it must be a constant display of the kind of love that only the Holy Spirit can inspire.

Paul didn’t build his ministries on slick ideas, programs, and corporate structure. He built them on nothing more or less than the simple truth of strong relationships and brotherhood. Paul loved people first and foremost, just as Jesus had, and that will always lead to the true kind of success. Perhaps it doesn’t always lead to explosive numerical growth, for this type of model takes time and much effort, but it will always be the best and only way of building God’s church.

Paul continued to make his way towards Jerusalem where he was hoping to arrive before Pentecost, so his time was definitely tight on this trip. As he arrived in Miletus Paul decided that he did not want to take the time to travel to Ephesus which was about 30 miles away but he did desire to see the elders of the church and to encourage them one more time. Luke doesn’t tell us why Paul did not want to go into Ephesus although it probably was not solely related to saving time, as he could just as easily and quickly traveled to Ephesus and back to Miletus in the amount of time that it took for a messenger to make the trek to Ephesus, gather up the elders in Ephesus and bring them back to Miletus. It is quite possible that one of the factors in Paul’s decision was the massive trouble that he faced previously in Ephesus. It might have caused quite a ruckus had he returned which could have delayed his return to Miletus and caused him to miss the ship to Jerusalem. Paul thought it wiser to have the elders come to him, though he no doubt wished that he could have seen all of his brothers and sisters in Ephesus.

This was no easy trip to make on the spur of the moment but the Ephesian elders clearly valued their relationship with Paul and were willing to sacrifice to see him. As they arrived Paul gave them a farewell address, something that was fairly typical in the ancient world (see Gen. 47:29-49:33; Deut. 31:14-33:29; Josh 23:1-24:30; 1 Sam. 12:1-25; 2 Ki. 2:1-14; Matt. 28:18-20; John 13-17; 2 Tim., etc.) when someone was drawing to the end of their life, a relationship, or a specific period in their life. Paul seemed to sense that this would be his last words face-to-face with his dear brothers in Ephesus.

As such, Paul will remind them that because he did his best to live as an example of the life in Christ for them to follow and emulate. The first thing that he mentions is that he lived among them, identified with them, and served them. His words in verses 17-18 serve as a reminder of how he lived when he was with them (see 1 Thess. 2:1-2; 5:10-11; Phil. 4:15 for similar examples). Paul reminds them that the main thing he did among them was to build relationships. He didn’t approach them as a leader building a large religious structure for his own benefit, rather he served with great humility (2 Cor. 10:1; 11:17; 1 Thess. 2:6) and tears. His work was not just work, though, it was serving the Lord (Rom. 1:1; 12:11; Phil. 2:22) despite constant opposition from his Jewish opponents (2 Cor. 11:24, 26; 1 Thess. 2:14-16). He did the hard work of building relationships and that’s what he was calling them to do.

The second thing that he reminds them of is that he was a true teacher of the gospel. He went from house to house and taught the people the things that they needed to live as the people of God (Rom. 16:5; Col. 4:15; Philemon 21). He spent the time and did the hard work of building up the people according to their needs in Christ (Gal 4:16; 2 Cor. 4:2).

The third reminder is that he was a bold witness to the gospel to all people; both the Jews and Greeks (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 9:20). Paul never got comfortable in building up a small little group of believers and then hunkering down satisfied with that. He never stopped teaching and building up the community but he also never stopped proclaiming the gospel to unbelievers despite the fact that this would bring continued opposition and persecution. The hallmarks of response to the gospel that Paul expected was repentance, which was dying to self (Gal. 2:20), and faith in the Lord Jesus (Romans 10:9-13).

His fourth reminder was that his suffering came as a result of obedience to the Father. Paul was uncertain of his future (Rom. 15:30-32) but he knew that the Spirit was compelling him to get to Jerusalem and he knew that wherever he went, the Spirit had already ensured him that he would face prison and hardships. It cannot be stated with certainty, but I do think that a strong case can be made for identifying this with the thorn in the flesh that Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. Three times he asked the Lord to remove this reality but God refused, knowing that it would continue to drive Paul back to the Lord’s strength in humility. Bolstering the thought that Paul’s “thorn” was this constant persecution comes from the fact that on three separate occasions in the Old Testament, opposition from the enemies of God and his people is referred to as as being “thorns” (Num. 33:55; Jud. 2:3; Josh 23:12-13). It seems that everywhere Paul went he faced opposition, persecution, and riots and he very well could have viewed this as his humbling thorn in the flesh.

It might seem strange that Paul could both believe that the Spirit was calling him to Jerusalem and that he would likely suffer harsh persecution when he arrived. The answer lies in verse 24. Paul’s focus was not on his life. He considered his life to have been forfeited when he died to himself at baptism and took up his total and complete commitment to the life of Christ (Gal. 2:20). His aim was to finish the course that the Lord had laid out for him and spread the gospel as far and wide as the Spirit would allow and direct him to. Paul realized that his suffering and persecution came as a result of his obedience to God’s will not because he had spurned it.

Because Paul’s sole focus was on his mission as a kingdom announcer and not his own security or comfort, he found great significance in the simple action of doing his duty and proclaiming the whole will of God. He had watered down the message to be more popular, he had not exalted sentimentality over the truth. He had boldly, fearlessly, and tirelessly preached the entire will of God to them. Like the watchman of Ezekiel (Ezek. 3:16-21; 33:1-9) who was charged with the responsibility of adequately warning the people of coming danger, so Paul was innocent of their blood. This gives us important insight into just how vital the role of evangelism was for Paul. It had been one of his priorities during his time in Ephesus and should continue to be a major focus for the Ephesian elders and the family of believers in Ephesus.

As almost an aside here, Paul mentions that he will not see any of them again. Whether this was due to a desire on his part to turn his eyes further West towards Rome and Spain and regions even beyond that, Lord willing, or a creeping revelation from the Holy Spirit that his time was short, we do not know. The fact that he would tell them such a thing, however, is evidence of the closeness of their relationship. At every turn he had acted out of gratitude for his relationship with God and had in turn built deeply genuine relationships with them. Telling someone that you had a shallow relationship with that you would be leaving and never see them again would hardly be cause for much of a response. But as we will see in the next section, Paul’s declaration of his impending absence caused his friends much sorrow. The church in Ephesus had grown and would continue to grow because it was a family of relationships not a collection of religious people. It is incredibly important for God’s people today to be constantly reminded of the fact that we are not a religion, but members of God’s family.

Devotional Thought
Look around at your own relationships in Christ. Are they shallow and business-like or have you done the difficult work of building deep and loving relationships in the body of Christ. Are your best friends in the body of Christ? Do you work hard at creating and building those relationships? Have you built deep and long-lasting friendships among God’s people? This is, after all, what being part of the body is all about.

Acts 20:1-12

2012-01-20T08:27:00.001-06:00

Through Macedonia and Greece
1 When the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia. 2 He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece, 3 where he stayed three months. Because some Jews had plotted against him just as he was about to sail for Syria, he decided to go back through Macedonia. 4 He was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, Gaius from Derbe, Timothy also, and Tychicus and Trophimus from the province of Asia. 5 These men went on ahead and waited for us at Troas. 6 But we sailed from Philippi after the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and five days later joined the others at Troas, where we stayed seven days.

Eutychus Raised From the Dead at Troas
7 On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. 8 There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. 9 Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. 10 Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” 11 Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. 12 The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.

Dig Deeper
Some years ago I had an opportunity to take my eldest son to hear a man speak on the topic of the creation of God. He had become a somewhat famous debater and speaker on the topic. The man spoke in over 300 cities per year which meant that he was speaking on the topic of creation in a different city nearly every day of the year. Add to that the fact that he occasionally spoke several times in one day and you realize that this speaker actually spoke to around 500 different crowds a year. Some of those groups were small but the vast majority of them were quite large, numbering in the many hundreds and even thousands. One can only imagine the number of people that he met at each speaking engagement, let alone each year. And the fact remains that despite some serious lack of judgment in the form of tax evasion that has since been revealed and resulted in a prison sentence, he was extremely skilled at speaking and debating (although his level of “expertise” is debatable) and drew large crowds wherever he went. He was also very skilled at keeping his eye on the big picture of spreading his message throughout the world through his personal appearances but also through television and videos.

Yet, as popular as this man got and as many places as he spoke at, he had an amazing ability to focus in on the personal element, which may help explain a lot of his popularity. Allow me to explain. Many entertainers or even traveling speakers and preachers become so focused on the larger mission and the big crowds or the “show” that they are largely uninterested or rather awkward when it comes to interacting with people on an individual basis. This particular man, however, had no such deficiency. He could talk to a crowd of thousands and then come and meet one individual and speak with them as though he knew them and sincerely cared about them. In fact, my son had an opportunity to talk to him before his presentation on the night that we attended. The conversation didn’t last for more than a minute but this man had connected with my some on such a personal level that when it came time for us to leave before the lecture was finished, my then eight year old (or so) son thought that we should find a way to tell him that we were leaving early because he was sure that this speaker would be concerned that my son had left. Here he was speaking to hundreds of people but had connected on such a personal level that this eight year old felt they were close friends.

In a way, Luke has this same skill as he tells the story of the advancement of the gospel in the early days of the church. At times the pace of Acts can leave us breathless as Luke scans the massive history of the early church and describes the highlight moments of the formation of the family of God. He can cover months and years in a few words and takes us through a period of decades from a bird’s eye view in a very skilled way. Yet, just when we think that we are racing through a survey of only the monumentally important events and will focus on just the “big players” in the Christian movement, Luke suddenly slows down and gives us a glimpse at encounters that are so simple, so real, and so authentic that it can catch us off-guard. Yet, without these personal moments, like a sleepy young man tumbling out of a window, we can’t help but think that we would be missing an important element of the story of the gospel. It is the narrative of God’s incredible work in spreading the good news of the Messiah to the ends of the earth but it is also a movement that happens one person and one story at a time. The gospel story is a grand epic and a personal memoir all at once. This is precisely what Luke has given us in the book of Acts.

Epic works like Luke’s travel narrative of the gospel of Jesus were not unknown in his day. Travel narratives like the Odyssey and Aeneas were, of course, quite popular in Luke’s day and although there is certainly a travel motif in both Luke (Jesus’ travel journey as he sets his face towards Jerusalem) and Acts, his heroes are very different than those of the typical Greek and Roman epics. Luke’s observant readers might have heard echoes of those stories in Luke’s work but would have, no doubt, been more struck by the stark differences in Luke’s epic account.

One big difference is that Luke is focusing on the spread of the gospel in his narrative and not on one person such as Paul. Luke is actually a bit sparse on many of the details of Paul’s travels during this time. We know from Paul’s letters that one of his primary focuses in his travels that Luke describes here was to collect money from the Gentile churches for support for the poor in the church in Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8:16-24) but Luke makes no mention of that here. We do know that Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthians while in Macedonia. On arriving in Macedonia his urgent concerns over the reaction of the Corinthian church to his “painful letter” were quelled by the arrival of Titus with good news prompting his letter. During his three months in Greece is the most likely time that Paul penned his masterpiece letter to the church in Rome.

Yet, as Luke races through the details of the grand story of the spreading of the gospel he tells us of none of these details, though he did find it important to detail the men that accompanied Paul on the rest of his journey, a group that included a representative from each of the major regions where churches had bee planted by Paul. The reason for the large group of companions and the reason that Luke felt recording all of the traveler’s names was important was probably two-fold. The larger group served as a means of safety for Paul and a verification that all of the money collected reached its destination. It also served as a personal testament to the church in Jerusalem that the Holy Spirit really was building one family of all nations throughout the world.

But just as quickly as Luke rushes through important events with sweeping broad strokes, he abruptly puts the brakes on and gives us a personal story that, while touching, seemingly pales in comparison as far as importance when it comes to some of the details that Luke has chosen not to include. While this specific story of the church meeting together in Troas may not seem important that is precisely why it is. The gospel is not just some grand sweeping narrative where only the end product matters. It is a large tapestry, indeed, but it is woven together by these touching moments of family, concern for one another, and the spread of the word of God from one person to another.

Luke seems to indicate that the Christians were already coming together to break bread (a term that most prevalently referred to the taking of the Lord’s Supper) on the first day of the week. Depending on whether Luke was using the Jewish or Roman method of keeping time, this gathering would have either been on Saturday night (which was the start of Sunday in the Jewish system) or Sunday night. The Christian community had no such luxury of having Sunday as a day off work so they had to meet either early in the morning or later at night. This was one of those late night meetings and people would surely have been tired after a full day of work and activity.

We don’t know what time the gathering started but Luke tells us that Paul spoke for what was at least several hours, something which would not have been that unusual, especially with an opportunity to hear an apostle as he passed through their town. Luke has given us a picture of a family of believers that were truly committed to the apostles teaching and greatly valued the preaching of the gospel, even at what we would consider the great expense of a lack of sleep on a night where they would have had to work and go about business as usual the next day.

The combination of the warmth generated by many lamps and the lateness of the hour was too much for Eutychus. The name “Eutychus” meant “fortunate” and was a common slave name and based on the word used by Luke, it is most probable that he was somewhere in the pre-teen to young teen age range. Despite sitting in the window and having at least some access to fresh air, it was all a bit too much for the young man and he, as some are apt to do, drifted asleep during Paul’s lesson. As a result, he tumbled out of the open air window to the ground below from the third story causing his death.

Some have tried to argue that perhaps the young man only appeared to be dead, but the doctor Luke clearly intended to convey that he was indeed dead. When Paul went downstairs and scooped the boy up in his arms a miracle happened that enabled Paul to immediately declare that he was not dead any longer. There are certainly parallels here with miraculous raising of the dead by Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:32-37) but Luke probably most clearly wanted to depict Paul as being like Peter (Acts 9:39-42).

The young man had been stunningly raised from the dead, something that surely would have been a memorable moment for the young Christians in Troas. After seeing such a miracle, what better time to go upstairs and celebrate the meal that commemorated for them the death and resurrection of their Messiah? With this miracle fresh in their minds, the Christians returned upstairs to break bread together, though we have to wonder if any of them, especially Eutychus, ever looked at a window the same again.

Following the communion meal, Paul had more to teach and say to the Christian family and continued to speak with them until daybreak; something that should be kept in mind the next time you are tempted to complain that the preacher has gone a little too long. At the end of the night, buoyed by the teaching, the fellowship, and the miracle the disciples took the young man home encouraged and bonded further as the people of God. One more amazing thread had been woven into the tapestry of the Messiah’s people.

Devotional Thought
The kingdom life is certainly about the grand story of God becoming the King of his people and his creation but it is also a very personal story of individuals. Sometimes it can be easy to forget that. Is there anyone that you haven’t given personal attention to in awhile that might benefit spiritually from a few moments of your undivided time? Who can you encourage today on a personal level?

Acts 19:23-41

2012-01-18T09:10:00.002-06:00

23 About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. 24 A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there. 25 He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and said: “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. 26 And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. 27 There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.”

28 When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” 29 Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s traveling companions from Macedonia, and all of them rushed into the theater together. 30 Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him. 31 Even some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theater.

32 The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there. 33 The Jews in the crowd pushed Alexander to the front, and they shouted instructions to him. He motioned for silence in order to make a defense before the people. 34 But when they realized he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about two hours: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

35 The city clerk quieted the crowd and said: “Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? 36 Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to calm down and not do anything rash. 37 You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. 38 If, then, Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. 39 If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. 40 As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of what happened today. In that case we would not be able to account for this commotion, since there is no reason for it.” 41 After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly.

Dig Deeper
Anyone who is somewhat familiar with the city of Las Vegas in the United States knows that the nickname of that town is “sin city.” It has a wild reputation for casinos, strip clubs, and the like in the world of entertainment, and just about anything you want to do when it comes to sinful behavior can be done in Vegas. There are, at the same time, churches that exist in Las Vegas. Yet, as far as I know these two worlds don’t come into conflict all that often. I’m sure the churches there occasionally denounce the sorts of behavior that go on in certain places in Vegas, but for the most part it seems as if those two worlds are quite willing to go about their business and leave the other one be.

But what do you think would happen if some new church or preacher went into Vegas and began to preach the gospel in all of its confrontational fullness. In our world today we seem quite happy to separate spheres and keep Christianity safely in the religious sphere, almost seemingly quarantined from other parts of the “real world”. But Paul’s gospel was confrontational. If Jesus really was the king of the new creation and the life of that new creation was available now in Christ then that meant confronting and taking down the ways of life and mindsets of the old created order. So what if this new group set up shop right on the gambling and prostitution strip in Vegas and began to boldly denounce such ways and call people to a new life where gambling and self-indulgent lifestyles were no longer an option (not in the condemning self-righteous way that so many religious people fall into but in the freeing, life-giving manner of the true gospel)? What if people began to come to this message and give up gambling and other things by the hundreds and then thousands and the casinos began to slowly empty as people entered into the life of the new creation and walked away from the deeds of the darkness?

Do you think that the power brokers in Vegas would wish this church well and just leave them to go about their work while their casinos steadily drained like a bathtub once the stopper has been pulled? The quickest way to get people agitated with you is to hit them in the wallet. In this scenario it would not take long for the casinos to respond and I suspect that the response would be lightning fast and devastatingly hard. They have a lot of power in Las Vegas and it wouldn’t take long for them to attempt to do whatever it took to get that church out of town. If this type of teaching took root, tourism would slow dramatically, the casinos would dry up and the whole city would feel the pinch economically for a time. They would, no doubt, appeal to legal arguments and any other appeals to which they could turn to get rid of this group, and maybe even to some not-so-legal means. I know two things for sure. The first is that the response would be as nasty as it was forceful. The second thing I know is that this is the sort of thing that should and will happen when the true and full gospel of the kingdom of God is preached.

As Paul and his companions continued to boldly preach the gospel in Ephesus they continued to call people to live as though Jesus was the king of their kingdom right now in every area of their lives. In a town that was so heavily invested in magic and pagan idolatry it was just a matter of time before the opposition got nasty. The public display of destroying the equivalent of millions of dollars of spells and paraphernalia that went along with worship of Artemis, the primary goddess of the Ephesians no doubt spurred on the opposition that Luke describes here. The problem, though, wasn’t so much the destruction of those old items but the growing realization of those who profited from such things of what this new growing way of life would mean for future business prospects. What would happen if these people continued to grow in their influence and called people away from buying things like the silver shrines that depicted Artemis or her temple?

Something clearly had to be done and it was Demetrius who stepped up to do it. Demetrius was likely the head of the guild of silversmiths. It was common for trades to form guilds at this time and work together to protect the common interests of one another. The gospel had become a clear threat as it called people to live their lives in a completely new way and Demetrius could see where this was heading so he was determined to nip it in the bud.

The goddess Artemis (Diana in Roman mythology) was at the center of Ephesian worship. Images of her and her temple were extremely popular and the sale of these idols helped to prop up the Ephesian economy. The temple of Artemis is regarded as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and covered acreage four times the size of the Parthenon in Athens. Artemis was widely worshipped around the Roman world to such an extent that Ephesus was somewhat of a place of pilgrimage for those around the Empire coming to the temple to partake in worship of the goddess which often included orgies and the like.

Being that Artemis worship was so central to not just Demetrius and the silversmiths but the whole region, it did not take much for them to gather a large crowd in the theater in Ephesus, an impressive structure that still exists today. Let’s be clear about the tumult that the silversmiths had ratcheted up here. The theater in Ephesus held about 25,000 people and Paul wasn’t just threatening the livelihood of one guild. They had managed to make the case to the Ephesian people that if this gospel was not dealt with it would mean economic ruin for them all and would discredit their mighty goddess. The results of this kingdom that Paul was preaching really taking route would mean drastic consequences for a town and region that was completely centered around their goddess and that theater may have been near capacity.

Things quickly became a near riot and the people seized the first two Christians that they could get their hands on, Gaius and Aristarchus. When Paul found out what was going on, his heart was that of an evangelist. How could he pass up the opportunity to declare the gospel to crowds that perhaps numbered in the thousands and even tens of thousands? Paul was zealous but he was not prideful, however, and he let cooler heads prevail as he allowed other disciples and even some very powerful local officials whom Paul had befriended during his time there convince him to stay away. The balance of Paul’s life shows clearly that this had to do with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and not fear of what might happen to him.

This was no organized legal demonstration or protest. It was chaos and such situations can get dangerous quickly. In fact many people there were angry and shouting but didn’t even know exactly what precipitated this situation. Those can often be the most dangerous types of crowds because they can be easily manipulated. The Jews would probably have been quite supportive of this protest against Paul and the other Christians and sent Alexander up to speak on their behalf. Luke doesn’t tell exactly what Alexander’s purpose was as he may not have known, but it seems likely that he would have denounced Paul and added to the fervor. Even though they would not have supported Artemis worship, the Jews would have been thrilled to have Paul run out of town. But the Ephesian crowd had been whipped into a frenzy of the type that you only get when you mix together politics, economics, nationalism, intolerance, and religion and they shouted the Jewish representative down and continued chanting and extolling the greatness of Artemis for two hours.

Many commentators suppose that this incident in Ephesus is not the specific item that Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15:32 and 2 Corinthians 1:8 where he speaks of facing “wild beasts” and despairing of life in Ephesus. While he may not have been referring to this incident alone, surely the frightening ferocity of the opposition that had been whipped up was a good portion of what Paul referred to. Interestingly, Artemis was widely held up as the protector of wild creatures and beasts so Paul’s reference in 1 Corinthians 15:32 to having to fend off the wild beasts in Ephesus was almost surely a slightly sarcastic reference to followers of Artemis.

Just as things were apparently getting close to spiraling out of control, the city clerk of Ephesus, a man with considerable authority stepped up and calmed the crowd. With the skill of a true politician he was able to appeal to their logical side, an exceedingly difficult task under the circumstances. Paul’s position was that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the one true God was becoming king of the world and people could leave their allegiance to the power structures of the world and enter into God’s family and kingdom. This meant that all other gods were nothing more than lifeless idols made by human hands. But this clerk appealed to the belief that the first image of Artemis had fallen to earth (likely a meteorite) and was sent by the gods. His point was that they all knew the “truth” about Artemis and her image and had nothing to fear from these Christians. He was in no way sympathetic towards the Christians but was protecting the crowd from getting out of hand and risking losing democratic freedoms like the right to assemble to the Romans who would quickly shut things down if they felt that things were getting out of control. He urged them to remember that the grievances that the silversmiths had could be and should be taken up in a court of law. He then turned the tables and reminded them that if they kept this behavior up, they would be the ones that would find themselves in trouble with Rome and not the Christians. Although this ended the immediate riot, it doesn’t mean that the persecution and opposition in Ephesus ended by any means.

The question that we must ask ourselves is whether or not the gospel we preach is as appropriately confrontational to the things that stand opposed to the kingdom of God. Are we truly proclaiming a kingdom that by its very nature and truth shines a spotlight on the darkness of the world and causes them to block the light from their eyes? If not, what kingdom are we proclaiming?

Devotional Thought
Throughout Acts the confrontational aspect of the gospel came not so much from Christians denouncing sinful behavior but from them declaring the freedom from those things that comes when God is your king. How can you declare this message in your little corner of the world today and maybe stir up a little healthy confrontation?

Acts 19:8-22

2012-01-11T09:32:00.002-06:00

8 Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. 9 But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. 10 This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.

11 God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.

13 Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” 14 Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. 15 One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” 16 Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

17 When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. 18 Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. 19 A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.[c] 20 In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.

21 After all this had happened, Paul decided[d] to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. “After I have been there,” he said, “I must visit Rome also.” 22 He sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia, while he stayed in the province of Asia a little longer.

Dig Deeper
There was an old professional wrestler who became somewhat famous due, in part, to a line of his that he repeated often. He would regularly remind his opponents that in to “be the man” they had to “beat the man.” His point, of course, was that you only take the place of preeminence by knocking off the one who currently holds that position. What is true of athletics is, I suppose, also true of our hearts. Whatever holds the position of highest importance in our hearts can be considered our god. It is certainly the thing to which we are most beholden. For the Greeks in Ephesus, the thing that had most captured their heart, imagination, and allegiance was magic. They believed in magic and its power so much that in the ancient world and spell or formula was often referred to as an “Ephesian writing.” The city itself had a reputation as a center of learning and the practice of magical arts, and they were deeply committed in their devotion to these magical powers.

To understand all of that is virtually necessary to understand what Luke wants us to see in this section. Without understanding the hold that their belief in magic and dark powers had on the Ephesians, this passage will seem strange, superstitious, and almost at odds with what we believe to know about the gospel and how it should be spread. This encounter at Ephesus was all about power and challenging what people held most dear in their hearts.

It might help to think of ancient Egypt for just a moment. During the time of Moses, Egypt was beholden to their belief in their gods and so, apparently, were the Israelites who had lived in that land for over 400 years. When Moses came to free the children of Abraham and serve notice on the Egyptians, there was a mighty power struggle that had to be won but it was not between Moses and Pharaoh. It was between Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the gods of Egypt. That is why each plague that Yahweh wrought on Egypt was a direct attack on the major gods of their religious beliefs. (For instance the water into blood was an assault on Hapi the god of the Nile; the boils were a direct affront to Imhotep, the physician god, and Thoth, the god of magic and healing; the hail was a conquering of Nut the sky goddess; the locusts were directed at Seth the god of crops; the dark was a clear defeat of Re, the mighty sun god and so on). God was clearly defeating these gods so that he could replace their positions of preeminence within the hearts of his people.

This is precisely what was going on in Ephesus. These seemingly strange accounts of miracles that almost seem to delve into the magical realm are not mere accounts of legend and myth that has seeped into Luke’s account. Nor are they a demonstration that the gospel was (and perhaps still should be, some might claim) accompanied by magic-type miracles. This was clearly a special situation. It was a defeat of the thing that the Ephesians held most dear so that they could see the truth and true power of the gospel. The power wasn’t in magic or spells or even Paul. The true power was the power of God. To use that famous wrestlers phrase, God was about to step up and beat the man at his own game.

Paul began his ministry in Ephesus, which lasted an uncharacteristically long period for him of two to three years, with a three month stint of preaching and teaching in the synagogue. He apparently had some initial success before being beset with the same sort of opposition from Jewish leadership that he had faced many times before. Rather than incurring further opposition, Paul moved his teaching sessions to a hall where either Tyrranus was the primary lecturer or was owned by Tyrannus. This must have been a fairly successful endeavor because Paul continued there as his main evangelistic outlet for over two years. It seems that during this time some of Paul’s co-workers such as Epaphras (Col. 1:7) were busy evangelizing the rest of the province of Asia, including planting churches in Colosse; Laodicea; Hieropolis, and quite possibly all seven of the churches mentioned by John in his Revelation.

While teaching was the heart and soul of Paul’s ministry, as the preaching of the word of God always will be, God used Paul in other ways as well. While working in the morning before he went off to the lecture hall for the afternoon, people were taking Paul’s work aprons and handkerchiefs to the sick who were being healed and freed from demonic possession. Luke is clear to point out that this was not magic. It was not the result of a spell. It was not even Paul who was capable of such amazing feats. It was the power of the one true God demonstrating the fraud and impotency of demonic magic when compared to the true power of God.

Luke also made clear that this was not a repeatable event to be mimicked for personal use or gain as verses 13-16 make clear. They serve as a stern warning for hucksters who would try to claim the ability to harness non-normative and non-repeating events like those that took place in Ephesus for their own gain or “ministry” claims (although I recently saw a so-called preacher hawking his own green healing cloths on television while using verses 11-12 as a justification for this).

The miracles that were done through Paul were God’s way of showing the Ephesians true power and divesting them from their belief in magic so that they could hear the true message of the gospel, the truth that the power of God’s new creation was breaking into the present realm and brining its holistic restoration to bear. The miracles were a small demonstration of the new creation, nothing more and nothing less. But Luke knew that many would try to co-opt that power and use it as nothing more than another talisman or spell next to all of their other options. All things Jewish were particularly attractive as Jewish magic was considered to be highly effective. Thus, it should be of little surprise that seven men were disciples of Sceva. It is quite possible that Sceva was a magician (possibly even Jewish himself) who called himself a chief priest to gain the reputation of the Jewish connection and impress others (not unlike magicians today who call themselves the “great” or “amazing” something or the other).

But these seven men were attempting to fool with the real deal and not just dabble in magic. They sought to use the name of Jesus to cast out demons. They had obviously been deeply impressed with the works that had been done by Paul through the power of God and thought that they too could invoke the name of Jesus. But they were not part of God’s family and were seeking to use God’s power for their own gain. And like someone using a weapon that they don’t know how to handle only to have it blow up in their face, they had stepped into the realm of the big boys and were about to face the real power. But don’t be fooled into thinking that the real power was the demon that declared that he knew and presumably respected Paul and Jesus and then proceeded to beat them to a pulp, leaving them scrambling, naked, and bleeding. The real power lay in the name of Jesus, something that could not be appropriated for their own use. The family of God wasn’t built on magic but on the power of God and that power had been shown as the real thing while their beloved magic was nothing more than a pretender. And a severe warning had been laid down. One had better think twice before trying to manipulate the power of God for their own gain.

These displays of the power of the kingdom of God were enough to convince many that they needed to divest in their idolatry and adherence to magic and seek the kingdom of God. But as always, to do so involved repentance from the gods that bound them. In this case, they brought their magic scrolls of spells and enchantments which would have taken lifetimes to accrue and pass down. The total value amounted to a day’s wage for 50,000 workers, an amount that has been estimated in today’s terms to be as high as several million dollars. And they weren’t just denouncing or selling these books and scrolls, they were destroying them and they were revealing the spells publicly which, it was believed, robbed the spell of its power. The power of God had made itself manifest and the counterfeit power of magic had lost in an expensive way which is perhaps the quickest way to gain opposition as the following passage will make clear. The Ephesians who believed, however, had learned rightly to trust in the power of God rather than magic. Just as God had defeated the Egyptian gods head to head and run roughshod over the prophets of Ba’al on Mt. Carmel, God had taken on the power of magic and defeated by exposing it’s lack of power and demonstrating that the true power was in God alone.

Although the point for many had been made, they would continue to need to be taught on the topic of spiritual power and the true power of the family of God. This is possibly reason that Paul’s most thorough explanation of spiritual powers and the spiritual battle that Christians face come in Paul’s letter called Ephesians (which he either wrote to the Ephesians or while imprisoned in Ephesus). They would continue to have to be educated on the subject, but the initial battle had been won in the hearts of many. The true power of God had been shown.

Devotional Thought
Take at look at those around you in your life. What are their gods that they believe and trust in? How can you allow the Spirit to work through you to demonstrate to them the emptiness and lack of true power in those things? How can you show them that true power to change lives and bring eternal peace comes from God alone.

Acts 18:24-19:7

2012-01-09T07:11:00.002-06:00

24 Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. 25 He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor[a] and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. 26 He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

27 When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. 28 For he vigorously refuted his Jewish opponents in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.

Paul in Ephesus
1 While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when[a] you believed?”
They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

3 So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”

“John’s baptism,” they replied.

4 Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues[b] and prophesied. 7 There were about twelve men in all.

Dig Deeper
A few years ago, I could not stand the idea of cell phones. I vowed that I would never own one but then my wife had to go into the hospital for a period of several months with a difficult pregnancy and I needed to be as available as possible so I began to carry one. Slowly but surely I saw the benefits of having a cell phone and now I cannot imagine going without one. Until recently, however, I felt the same about smart phones. I just didn’t see the point of having a phone that can do a hundred different things above and beyond simply being a phone. That is, until my wife got one for me. Suddenly I can keep track of my schedule and the schedule on my wife’s phone, I can video conference with people around the world regardless of where I’m at, I can check my email anywhere at anytime, I can read and create documents anywhere, and a whole host of other indispensable things. I’ve grown to truly appreciate this phone and be able to do many things on it that I never would have imagined were possible from a mere phone. I’ve even spent some time showing interested people the virtues of this phone and all of the things that it can do. Just when I thought that I had it all figured out, though, I realized recently that there was a function on my phone that I was trying to make work but I just could not figure it out. That’s when my eight year-old son sat down with me and proceeded to explain to me his mild frustration with me over the fact that I simply did not have a full working knowledge of my own phone. I don’t understand if the kids these days are born with technology genes that us older folks simply don’t have but he was able to show me several vital functions and features of my phone that I didn’t have a clue were even available (a surprising fact considering he doesn’t own a phone). I appreciated what I knew of it but he opened a whole new world by giving me a more adequate explanation of my phone.

As Luke continues to describe the spread of the gospel as it made its way from Jerusalem to the “ends of the earth” he takes us on a brief stop-off with two stories that show slightly different aspects of the same issue. In the early decades of Christianity there had been many elements of Jewish Messianic hope including the teachings of a coming kingdom of God that John the Baptist and his disciples were espousing, and even the teachings of Jesus himself that had made their way around the known world at the time. Many of these strands of teaching apart from that of Jesus and his disciples were but parts of the whole and there were apparently many different combinations and partial aspects of the truth, or even somewhat convoluted aspects of the gospel. Most of the work of the church was to preach the gospel to the Jews who were waiting for God’s Messiah and to the Gentiles who had little to knowledge or expectation of anything of the kind. But they also had to confront those who were still following John’s teachings or had heard but part of the message and truth of Jesus. Luke was no doubt taking special concern to include these two accounts to make clear that it was no longer appropriate to continue to follow John. The one that he had pointed to had come and everything that John had preached would come about had been fulfilled in the life, death, resurrection, and baptism into Jesus Christ. God’s family could finally be entered into fully and the seal of God’s Holy Spirit was available to all who entered into Christ.

Luke returns us to Ephesus where a man named Apollos arrived at a time when Paul was not in the city but Aquila and Priscilla were. Apollos was quite possibly an itinerant worker who engaged in teaching wherever he went, something that was not uncommon in these parts of the world at this time but we cannot be certain of that. He was a native of Alexandria which was a center of culture and learning in the ancient world but was also known to be an early center of various garbled versions of teaching about the Messiah so, although Luke doesn’t explicitly tell us, it is quite possible that Apollos had been instructed in portions of the life of Jesus. In addition to that, Apollos was Jewish and presumably grew up in the large Jewish community in Alexandria so his knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures would have been high. We cannot piece together all of the details concerning Apollos but we do know that he had been instructed at least partially concerning Jesus and that he was quite zealous or had “great fervor.” (A phrase which literally translated is “great fervor in spirit,” a phrase which some have pressed to argue that Apollos was full of the Spirit, but an understanding that is unlikely given the context.) Because of his passion for spiritual truth, Apollos taught accurately about Jesus as far as what he knew. It is quite reasonable at this point to conclude that Apollos had been taught by someone who had possibly even heard Jesus or knew of him during his lifetime but who had not yet known of the events surrounding his death and resurrection as well as Pentecost.

Luke goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Apollos was a sincere and honest man who taught about Jesus accurately, yet he was not fully informed on one vital point. He needed someone to sit down with him and explain the fullness of the gospel message adequately. This is exactly what Aquila and Priscilla would do as they would open a whole new world of the gospel of Jesus Christ to this already rather learned man. Their respect for Apollos is apparent as they did not confront this truth seeker in public. They privately invited him into their home to hear the full story. As they did so, Apollos’ sincerity and humility shined through as he listened and accepted the truth.

But what part of the gospel was Apollos missing? He knew of only the baptism of John which meant that he knew of only the symbolic and preparatory baptism of John the Baptist. Apollos was unaware that the Spirit had been poured out and God’s family made available to all who would not just know of Jesus but those that would believe in his life, repent of living for their own will, and submit to his Lordship, by being baptized into his life (Acts 2:38; Romans 6:1-4; Titus 3:4-8).

Luke does not explicitly state that Apollos was then baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of his sin and to receive the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38), but the fact that Luke rolls the conversion of Apollos directly into the account at the beginning of chapter 19 make if fairly clear that this is exactly what he was implying. There were, in other words, fervent and sincere people who had elements of the gospel but they too needed to be taught adequately and immersed into the life of Christ.

Once Apollos had been brought fully into God’s family, he wanted to continue his activities of traveling and teaching about Christ. The brothers and sisters in Ephesus not only encouraged him but sent a letter of recommendation so that he would be welcomed and trusted as a true believer by the community there. His time in Corinth was so successful that it could almost be argued he was “too successful.” Luke confirms that Apollos was “a great help to those who by grace had believed.” His teaching skill was no doubt a great addition to the Corinthian community but they were so young and immature that Paul would have to spend a fair amount of time in the opening chapters of his first letter to the Corinthians helping those who were so enamored with Apollos’ teaching skill and content that they began to create schisms. Yet, Paul, and Luke for that matter, never had anything but godly praise for this humble and powerful teacher of the gospel. In fact, Apollos was so powerful in arguing the truth of the gospel from the Scriptures with his Jewish brethren that some have put forth the theory that he was the author of the anonymously written Hebrews.

Luke intentionally connects these two accounts concerning the priority of baptism into the life of Christ as he mentions that while Apollos was in Corinth, Paul arrived for another visit to Ephesus. This time the Spirit opened the door in Ephesus in a unique way. While there, Paul ran into a group of about a dozen men whom Luke calls disciples. Much debate has gone into whether Luke intended to convey that these men were disciples of John or of Jesus. If they were strictly disciples of John, then it seems that Luke would have just said that. Yet, it is unlikely that Luke would mean that they were actual disciples as the rest of his account goes to show that they were not. In his work “Acts,” scholar I. Howard Marshall astutely points out that “Paul met some men who appeared to him to be disciples, but because he had some doubts about their Christian status he proceeded to examine their claims more carefully. Luke is not saying that the men were disciples but is describing how they appeared to Paul.” This is not unusual as Luke often spoke of the appearance of someone’s spiritual condition without specifically commenting on it before showing the truth of it such as noting that Simon “believed” (Acts 8.13, and; reporting the Judaizers as “believers” (Acts 15:5).

Noticing that something didn’t seem quite right, Paul inquired as to these men’s reception of the Holy Spirit. His assumption was that they, like all believers since Pentecost, would have been baptized through faith into Christ and received the gift of the indwelling Spirit (Acts 2:38). Yet Paul saw no evidence of that or of the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit as manifested in special gifts of the Spirit. Their answer probably didn’t surprise him at all. They, like Apollos, had not even heard of that the Spirit was now available on a personal basis.

Paul’s next assumption is instructive. If they had not received the Spirit and were not members of Christ then the problem must have had to do with baptism for in Paul’s mind, all who were buried into his death and resurrection through baptism in genuine faith were believers and would have received the indwelling of the Spirit. Just as Apollos had not known of the necessity of being baptized into Christ, this group of men had to be taught more adequately as well and were then immediately baptized into Christ, receiving the forgiveness of their sin and the gift of the counselor, the Holy Spirit.

Twice before the Spirit had prevented Paul from laying the foundation of a church in Ephesus and completing the work there that he desired to do but apparently now, the Spirit’s timing was right. It seemingly was through these twelve men that the foundation for a church in Ephesus would be laid. These men were not just baptized into Christ but Paul used his apostolic gift to pass on to them special gifts of the Spirit that would enable them to demonstrate the truth of their gospel claims to others in Ephesus. Once Paul had laid his hands on them, the Spirit came upon them (a separate function from the indwelling of the Spirit that all believers are promised at baptism into Christ per Acts 2:38) and empowered them to speak in tongues and prophesy.

These two accounts from Ephesus are encouraging reminders that the truth of the gospel is powerful. Even those who are very learned and sincere religiously can be brought into the life of Christ if they are humbly and patiently, albeit directly, taught more adequately about the need to fully enter into the life of Christ and become part of his family.

Devotional Thought
We have two separate examples here of disciples who were willing to speak boldly to sincere religious people rather than be sentimental. They put their love for God, the truth, and others ahead of the potential discomfort of speaking the gospel to those who were already convinced that they were doing the right thing. What is your response to such situations? Are you ready, willing, and able to step out in faith and to show biblical truth to those who need more adequate teaching and to do so with the same humility and respect that these first disciples had?

Acts 18:12-23

2012-01-04T10:45:00.001-06:00

12 While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack against Paul and brought him to the judge's bench. 13 "This man," they said, "persuades people to worship God contrary to the law!"

14 And as Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, "If it were a matter of a crime or of moral evil, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you Jews. 15 But if these are questions about words, names, and your own law, see to it yourselves. I don't want to be a judge of such things." 16 So he drove them from the judge's bench. 17 Then they all [f] seized Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the judge's bench. But none of these things concerned Gallio.

The Return Trip to Antioch
18 So Paul, having stayed on for many days, said good-bye to the brothers and sailed away to Syria. Priscilla and Aquila were with him. He shaved his head at Cenchreae, because he had taken a vow. 19 When they reached Ephesus he left them there, but he himself entered the synagogue and engaged in discussion with [g] the Jews. 20 And though they asked him to stay for a longer time, he declined, 21 but said good-bye and stated, [h] "I'll come back to you again, if God wills." Then he set sail from Ephesus.
22 On landing at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, [i] and went down to Antioch. 23 He set out, traveling through one place after another in the Galatian territory and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.

Dig Deeper
Last year an American football player made a vow at the beginning of the season that he was not going to shave his face until his team made it to the Super Bowl, the championship game of the National Football League. The attention that he received for this little stunt grew by the week both as a result of his team being very good and having a legitimate chance to make the Super Bowl and the fact that his beard was growing quite burly over the course of a long season. By the time the playoffs came around, his beard was in the realm of a fine Grizzly Adams-like beard. He continued to vow that he would not shave his beard off until he made it to the Super Bowl, which would have been interesting if his team had not made it, but they did win each round of the playoffs and made their way to the Super Bowl. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, his beard got a great deal of attention. He had vowed to grow it until he played in a Super Bowl and he had made it. Eventually his team lost in the Super Bowl but shortly after the game, with his vow fulfilled, he shaved his beard and came out publicly a few days later clean-shaven and ready to take on the challenge of the next season.

As Paul continued on with his journey of spreading the gospel throughout the world, he faced many challenges of different kinds. As he was beginning the journey back home to Antioch, Luke briefly mentions that Paul shaved his head because of a vow but doesn’t give us any more information than that. Commentators have long puzzled over what type of vow Paul was taking and what it meant. We can state with absolute certainty that he had not taken a vow to play in the Super Bowl. Some have suggested that he took a strict Nazarite vow which often involved not cutting one’s hair but strict vows of that nature were not taken outside of the land of Israel and always ended in Jerusalem so it is unlikely that it was a vow of that type. What is more likely is that Paul engaged in a typical but not formal Jewish custom of making vows that reminded them of a special circumstance or time period that they were offering to God. It is quite reasonable that Paul had chosen to undertake such a vow when God guided him to stay in Corinth to build up the ministry there for a time much longer than he had originally planned. It is quite possible, if this speculation is correct, that Paul was growing his hair as a sign of trust in God’s provision and protection through a long time in Corinth. Now as he left the region, he would shave his head to signify that God had indeed come through and that specific time was over.

But before he left the region of Achaia, Paul would be dragged before the authorities for one more important encounter, this time with the proconsul, Gallio. The charge against Paul was a familiar one that was lodged against the apostles and the early church most often. They were persuading people to worship God contrary to the Law of Moses. The church was constantly facing dual charges on either end of the spectrum. The Jews charged that the Christian belief followed in the blasphemous footsteps of their so-called Messiah, Jesus. They truly believed, as Paul once had, that the Christians were encouraging Jews to abandon their faith, disregard the Law, disrespect Moses, and therefore they stood as no better than the pagans.

On the other hand, the Romans were quite wary of the early Christians, especially as it became more and more clear that this was not just an offshoot of Judaism but was something entirely different. It might seem odd that Rome would have a problem with Christianity being that it was an empire that was quite tolerant of other religions as long as they didn’t pose a threat to the Empire itself. So how could a group that was built on the teachings of love and non-violence of their Messiah pose a threat? It was because they were not a typical religion. Rome would have been quite happy to allow just another group that held their private religious beliefs within the confines of their own community. But the Christians, although not political or militaristic, truly believed that Jesus was the true King of the world and this meant that Caesar was not. They were determined to live that way and live by the values of the kingdom to which they belonged in heart and loyalty. Rome may not have completely understood that but they saw the potential threat and were determined to stop it. This meant that the Christians typically found themselves squeezed between the religious zeal of the Jews and the political wariness of the Romans.

But as Paul stepped before Gallio, it was still early in the Christian development and Christianity had not yet fully gained the attention of the non-Jewish world and certainly the Christian community was not fully understood by the Romans. Gallio, like many in the pagan world at this time, still saw the Christian and Jewish conflict as an in-house squabble that they did not want to deal with. Gallio did not want to get involved what what he understood as arguments over things that the Romans didn’t believe, didn’t understand, and didn’t care about.

This might seem like a negative decision for Paul and the disciples but it was actually a great victory for them. It basically gave the Christian community a new freedom, at least in the region of southern and central Greece. Gallio’s decision meant that Christianity was still being viewed as a part of Judaism which meant that they would be afforded the same freedom that was allowed to the Jewish faith. In addition, he was clearly telling the Jewish leadership that he didn’t want to hear about any more complaints that they had with the Christians. For now, Rome would not do their dirty work.

Luke does not make it clear as to why Sosthenes was beaten and by who but he does make clear that Gallio was no saint. His decision was favorable for Paul but was not based in godliness or justice but convenience for him and Rome. Now he turns a blind eye to a crowd grabbing and beating a man. It may have been that the Greeks grabbed Sosthenes and beat him but it is more likely that the Jews beat their own synagogue leader either for losing the case before Gallio and losing the honor of the community or because he had somehow demonstrated Christian sympathies during the trial. Bolstering this last possibility is that Paul mentions someone named Sosthenes in 1 Corinthians 1:1 as his co-author (possibly the same man as the one in this passage, but not necessarily).

As Paul’s journey was coming to an end he left and headed towards Ephesus. God had prompted him to stay in the region of Corinth for longer than he had planned but now it was time to move on. It would make sense that if his vow was a remembrance and thanksgiving vow to God for his provision during his time in that region that as he left the region and headed toward Jerusalem that it was a good time to end the vow and give final thanks to God.

Paul finally arrived in Ephesus, in the province of Asia. He had earlier been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. Now in Ephesus, things seem to go well and Paul is asked to stay more and continue to preach the gospel, but Paul seemed to discern that the time was still not right for a full-scale ministry in Ephesus, at least it was not the time for Paul. But he did leave Aquila and Priscilla behind to build up the church. Paul was clearly a man who was constantly in touch with the guidance of the Spirit as he revealed God’s will to him and did not feel that he had to do everything himself. He would later urge Timothy to teach the ministry and gospel to faithful men who would be equipped to pass it on to others (2 Timothy 2:2) and that is precisely what he was doing here.

Verse 22 is a bit cryptic but it is likely that when Luke says that Paul “went up and greeted the church,” he is referring to Paul going to visit the church in Jerusalem (although he could simply be referring to the church in Caesarea, but it would be worded oddly if that were the case). What Luke was most likely telling us was that Paul was always accountable in his ministry to the church family at large. He was not a lone-gun but kept in contact with the historic center of the church and gave them occasional updates of his activities. Paul then traveled on to his “home” church in Antioch for a short time.

But even on arriving back at “home,” Paul would not stay put for long. He had established churches in Galatia and Phrygia and would now return to them to with a fatherly heart to love and strengthen them. Paul was always deeply committed to spreading the influence of God’s kingdom one heart at at time through active evangelism and church building but he never reduced those churches and converts to a numbers game. They weren’t just conquests or numbers for Paul. He cared deeply for each church, each community, and each person. Paul was truly an evangelist and a shepherd.

Devotional Thought
Paul was constantly working towards being sensitive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit whether he led Paul towards the expected or the unexpected and uncomfortable. Paul’s loyalty was to the Spirit, not himself or his own desires. Are you equally committed to following the guidance of the Spirit? Have you trained yourself to even discern the Spirit’s guidance and do you listen when he does guide you? To what is he calling you right now?

Acts 18:1-11

2012-01-02T08:33:00.003-06:00

Note: Sorry for the long delay in resuming our journey through Acts. Look for new devotionals every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

In Corinth
1 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. 4 Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.
5 When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. 6 But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”

7 Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. 8 Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.

9 One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. 10 For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” 11 So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.

Dig Deeper
There’s always a difficult line to discern when you feel that someone else is in error in their beliefs or practices concerning God. You have to decide whether they are truly in error and lacking some vital information about God and his word or whether it is simply just a difference in small matters of opinion that can be safely tucked into the category of disputable matters. A few years back, for instance, I had an interaction with a young man who was convinced that I was not part of God’s kingdom because our church will occasionally have musical instruments playing during our song worship. I’m pretty convinced biblically that this is one of those disputable matters and while I respect his right to feel that way, it is probably not a matter over which someone needs to be categorized as embracing false doctrine.

On the other hand, I had another friend awhile back who believed that water baptism into the life of Christ is not necessary for salvation, and that in fact, there are three types of ordained baptism in the New Testament. Neither of these view is biblical, of course, and flies directly in the face of Scriptures that state plainly that God graciously saves us (Titus 3:5; 1 Pet. 3:20) and forgives our sin (Acts 2:38) at baptism and that there is only one baptism (Eph. 4:5). As much as I would have liked to not have to confront him about this, it is serious business and so I felt that his error would be on my head if I didn’t at least try to proclaim the truth to him. As uncomfortable as it was, I did share the biblical truth with him although he rejected it, citing the fact that that’s not what he had been taught growing up, and he respected his pastor more than anyone else and just didn’t believe he could be wrong. Despite an inability to demonstrate the truth of his belief biblically, he sadly chose to side with what another person had told him. He didn’t listen to the biblical truth, but I had done all that I could do.

Paul certainly felt the burden of believing that he had the truth to proclaim to Jews and Gentiles alike wherever he went. He did have one advantage in that Christianity was such a new faith based on the recent life and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah that it was a safe assumption wherever he went and whoever he talked to that they needed to have the truth of the gospel proclaimed to them. There were very few gray areas between the truth and the false gospels that had popped up yet, although they were there already and would soon explode in scope and number. But Paul took his role as apostle quite seriously and felt that if he didn’t proclaim the truth of the Messiah to people wherever he went, regardless of the consequences of sharing that truth, that their blood would be on his head. But once he had faithfully proclaimed the gospel, that was all he could do. It was not his job to get people to respond. Once they heard the truth the responsibility shifted to them.

Despite the fact that Paul had been beckoned by the power of the Holy Spirit to Macedonia, things had not gone personally well for him there. Paul was now arriving in Corinth but still concerned about how things were going for Silas and Timothy who had remained for a time in Macedonia. Corinth was a metropolitan center that was teeming with life and energy. It was one of those cities that has a nearly palpable pulse wherever you go. But it had a dark side. As a commercial port it had attracted all types of people including a Jewish community, but it had a terrible reputation for immorality. Corinth was the center of worship of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, and had a temple for her with over 1,000 prostitutes housed there. In the ancient world, the term “Corinthian” became almost synonymous with the term “immoral”. Corinth was a fiercely Roman colony that was very proud of it’s “Roman-ness” and just as committed to the Roman gods and the Roman way of life.

Paul arrived in Corinth in “fear and trembling” (1 Cor. 2:3) after his previous experiences, but he was not deterred. Rather he was still determined to preach Christ crucified (1 Cor. 2:2) and nothing else in Corinth, a message that quickly separated the truth seekers from those who would cling to their own myths, idols, and opinions.

He must have been quite encouraged, though, to have met Aquila and Priscilla right away. Luke never says for certain that they were already Christians, but that seems to be the implication. They had recently arrived from Rome after the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, an act which included Jewish Christians as well. They were making a living as tentmakers, a profession which required skill in working with both leather and cilcium (a cloth made of goat’s hair from Paul’s native region of Cilcia) tent material. Paul was also a skilled tentmaker which was not that unusual as most rabbis and Pharisees in Paul’s day earned their own living through a trade of some sort. It seems that they quickly agreed to let Paul live with them and to stay on and work with them as well, an arrangement that allowed Paul to support himself while preaching the gospel.

Paul must have been relieved on two levels when Silas and Timothy arrived safely from Macedonia. First, he knew that they were safe and that he could finally receive some news as to the progress of the gospel in Macedonia (1 Thess. 3:6-10). Second, they apparently brought with them monetary support from the disciples in Macedonia (2 Cor. 11:9; Phil. 4:15-16). This allowed him lay down his tentmaker tools for awhile and fully devote himself to the message of the gospel which was what Paul wanted to do as much as possible to fulfill what he felt was his true calling in the Lord.

As an apostle, Paul knew that his work of declaring the truth of Jesus as the Messiah to the Jew first and then the Gentile was vitally important and he took that task seriously. He understood that when his fellow Jews, or anyone else for that matter, rejected the gospel they also rejected their only chance to be brought into the family of God. Preaching the gospel was his responsibility. If Paul failed to render that duty then he felt that he would have to answer to God for that. But once he had done so faithfully, he was innocent. Once the responsibility of preaching the gospel had been dispensed the onus of accountability shifted to the hearers and how they would respond to the truth.

When the Jews in Corinth did reject the gospel and began to be abusive towards Paul, as they had in so many other places, Paul shook his clothes out towards them. This was no empty gesture or a mere sign of frustration. Shaking out one’s garments was a sign of breaking fellowship with them (Neh. 5:13). It was the kind of gesture that Jews would usually aim towards the pagan Gentiles. It was an indicator form God’s servant that, in his eyes, they had put themselves in the category of the godless Gentiles and were no better off when it came to their position in God’s family. They, just like the Gentiles that they so quickly looked down upon, were also cut off from God’s family.

Whether the opposition that Paul faced forced his move to the house of Titius Justus or the persecution ramped up as a result of his move and subsequent success there remains an open question, but Paul did eventually move to Titius’ house which was right next door to the synagogue and would have been a constant “in-your-face” reminder of the success and power of the gospel that they had so summarily rejected. Most Romans had three names that they used under different circumstances so it is quite plausible that Titius Justus is one in the same with Gaius who was personally baptized by Paul (1 Cor. 1:14) and who was still hosting the whole church in Corinth in his house when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans. To have such a sizable house meant that Titius (Gaius?) was a prominent and wealthy member of Corinthian society but he was not the only prominent convert. The synagogue leader, Crispus, was also personally baptized by Paul (1 Cor. 1:14) and presumably became one of the early leaders of the young church in Corinth. Despite his opposition, then, Paul had a great deal of success in bringing people, both prominent and poor (cf. 1 Cor. 11) into the kingdom of God and was doing so right next to the very synagogue that had rejected the gospel, complete with the former leader of that synagogue as one of the newest converts!

We have to speculate a bit at this point that Paul had become so accustomed to being run out of towns that perhaps he was bracing himself for another such incident. It is possible that having such a well respected convert like the synagogue leader, Crispus, might have actually padded Paul against some of the harshest opposition that he usually faced. Whatever the case, God felt that it was necessary to assure Paul that Corinth was precisely where he wanted him to be and to stay. Paul had desires to continue spreading the gospel and eventually make his way to Rome, but the time was not yet to come. For now, he was assured that God would bring him great success in Corinth and protect him while he stayed and built the church.

It must have been an exciting and yet challenging time for Paul as we know from his letters that the young church in Corinth was petulant and strong-willed but also passionate and full of zeal and energy. They were like an undisciplined teenager that was constantly ready to explode with pent-up energy. And perhaps that’s why God chose to have Paul stay for the 18 months that he did. Imagine the problems that might have developed in Corinth had Paul not stayed as long as he did to build, mature, and establish his relationship with the church there.

Devotional Thought
How do you feel about God’s call on your life to teach the truth to others, especially those that find themselves in serious biblical error? Are you willing to risk embarrassment, rejection, or even be ostracized for the sake of declaring the truth of the gospel to others? Remember, it’s not our responsibility to make them respond positively but it is our responsibility to declare the truth to those in error.

Acts 17:22-34

2011-08-10T07:30:00.000-06:00

I want to thank all of those who so faithfully read these commentaries on the email list, the blog site, and on Facebook. I hope that you continue to find them helpful. I did want to let you know that I will not be able to post for about a month as we will be Africa on another ministry trip. This will be the last commentary until the middle of September. Thanks and God bless.

In Athens
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

Dig Deeper
As a new campus minister of a college ministry you would expect that you would be doing many more weddings than funerals, yet during my first two years in that role, I actually wound up performing more funeral ceremonies than weddings. The fact is, funerals are much tougher to do than weddings and I’m glad that over the years I have now evened that out and the number of weddings that I have done have actually surpassed the funerals. But I recall one funeral in particular where I felt like I was facing a bit of a hostile audience. I had been asked to perform the funeral for someone that I had never even met although they were close to a close family member of mine. To top it off, I knew hardly anyone that was actually at the funeral. Yet, I was asked to really preach the gospel and present it to a group of people that were necessarily starving for it at the moment. To make matters even more difficult, the audience was not a homogenous group. They varied from skeptics, atheists, and those that were very anti-God and anti-Christianity to those that were very religious (although the fruit of their lives seemed to belie their religiosity), and everything in between. But as I stood up and stared out at the audience, I had a daunting opportunity ahead of me, but it was an opportunity nonetheless. I found out that day just how difficult it can be to face an audience that is not immediately open to your message and who are coming from very different perspectives. It is not an easy task.

This is what was facing Paul in the Areopagus, only many times over. He had seized on the opportunity to preach the gospel in one of the most famous cities of the ancient world; a city that had a reputation for wisdom, knowledge, and philosophy. Athens was home to some of the greatest thinkers that the world had to offer. To top it off he was invited to the venue where the very best and brightest met and discussed the issues of the day. It doesn’t seem that Paul was being interrogated or asked to speak to a formal council or trial but all of the “big-wigs” of Athens were there and wanting to hear what Paul had to say. That’s not to imply that they were open to Paul’s message, they were mostly curious. They wanted to see what this babbler could come up with, primarily, it seems, for the purpose of amusing themselves.

So Paul had a huge task ahead of him. The audience was hostile but it was also full of men who held very different beliefs and philosophies. That meant that Paul had to present the gospel in such a way to make it approachable to people whose beliefs were sometimes in direct opposition to one another. He would have to try to be all things to all men but to do it at the same time. This was his chance. He was being given a hearing and through the guidance of the Holy Spirit he would do his best to take advantage of it. It is not, however, very likely at all that what Luke records here was the actual speech that Paul gave. What we have here is most likely a summary of what Paul said. This was after all the guy who could easily preach from sundown until past midnight so surely he took advantage of his moment before the Areopagus.

Many have taken Paul’s opening statement to the Areopagus as words of conciliation creating a bond of connection through compliment but ancient philosopher Lucian of Samosata recorded that complimentary openings “to secure the goodwill of the Areopagus were discouraged.” Therefore it was more likely simply an observation of fact that was neither complimentary or condescending. Athens was a very religious town that was very proud of its wisdom and knowledge so there was a bit of an irony that a town that was so sure of its own wisdom and that was so religious was also ignorant about the very gods that they sought to worship.

The Athenians had statues in honor of unknown gods as a safety precaution so that they weren’t slighting any gods that should have been receiving honor. This made sense for both the Epicureans who believed that if the gods did exist they were so distant that it would be difficult if not impossible to know them, and the Stoics who believed that the gods were one with the universe and not at all separate. Thus, the picture of the divine realm was fuzzy at best, so it was wise in their eyes to cover all of their bases.

What they did not know or understand Paul was going to declare to them in no uncertain terms. As he did so, he masterfully both identified with, at times, and challenged, at other points, both the Stoics and the Epicureans. He would show the Epicureans that they were correct that God was separate from his creation but that the true God was not unknowable. Rather, he was intensely knowable and wanted to be known intimately by the humans that he created. To the Stoics, Paul would agree that God was involved with every aspect of his creation but he would challenge them by demonstrating that he was separate from it and above it.

One amusing feature of the pagan gods that Paul seized upon was that they needed humans badly. They needed people to bring them food in order to eat and they needed people to build temples for them (see Isa. 46:1 and Jer. 10:5 for examples of the futility of the gods). But even at the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem Solomon pointed out that Yahweh was bringing himself down to the level of his creation, he certainly did not need a Temple and most assuredly could not be contained within it (1 Ki. 8:27). This God that Paul was proclaiming to them was not just another of the gods. He was the creator of the entire world and everything in it and he needed nothing from human beings as he expressed in Psalm 50:12 while clearly sticking his thumb in the eye of the so-called gods, “If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it.” Rather than needing something from humans, God has given us humans everything including our life and breath and everything else we have, which makes denying him all the more sadly ironic.

God created one man, Adam, and from him brought forth all of the nations of men. This meant that nations need not compete against one another or feel that it was necessary or even natural to all have their own gods. No, the Most High God was responsible for all of the nations. He knew who they were and had set the boundaries for each nation. Nothing in all of history has happened by chance but is all subject to God’s ruling sovereignty. Paul points out that even some of the poets from that region at least understood this in part, although certainly not fully, as they declared that we are God’s offspring. Paul certainly doesn’t mean that all nations are part of God’s promised family but that all people find their origins in God’s creative power.

God’s purpose in everything that he did throughout history, especially culminating in the Messiah (as Paul will get to rather quickly), was that people would know him. Paul’s language implies a picture of groping around in the dark on the part of humans as they sought to find the truth of God even though he was right there all the time. The futile human search for God had been a bit like someone deciding the answer cannot be four and then groping around for years trying to determine what the answer to two plus two is.

Because all humans come from Yahweh, the one, true God it should be obvious that he is not one of the manmade Gods that have eyes but cannot see and ears but cannot hear (Ps. 115:3-8). He is not one of those worthless gods who turn their followers into shells of a human being that are just as worthless and just as spiritually blind as those images that are crafted by humans. Paul, in essence, points out the sheer lunacy of worshipping a god that you just created with your own hands. In contrast, the true God made everything including us.

But the obvious question that this would raise was, “If this God was truly supreme over all creation why would he allow the nations to live in such open defiance and ignorance of him.” Paul’s response to that is threefold. First, God overlooked such ignorance in the past but now things have changed. Second, he commands that all the nations repent and worship him as the only true God. Third, there is a coming judgment where all nations, indeed all humans will have to answer for their idolatry. This repentance is not an option that will bring some small advantage to those who choose that route. It is a command for all humans everywhere.

The proof of all of this was as truth was the resurrection of Jesus. That showed that God’s age to come had indeed already started in the resurrection of the Messiah and that now that his new creation had broken in and started to set things right in the world and once the train had left the station there was no holding it back. God would indeed set the whole world right by brining it into the life of the Messiah and under his authority. There was a great irony in the fact that Paul was declaring in the Areopagus that the solution to the problems of the entire world was found in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In a fifth century play written by Aeschylus, the god Apollo dedicated the ground of the Areopagus saying, among other things, “when a man dies, and his blood is spilled on the ground, there is no resurrection.” What was ruled out as impossible, was now, Paul was telling them, the very thing on which the whole world was being turned right side up.

The resurrection, as Paul declared to the Corinthians, was foolishness to the Greeks (1 Cor. 1:23), and the Athenians were no different. Most of them sneered at the absurdity of such a thing. There idols were so firmly set in their own hearts that they were absolutely blind to the truth. But some were open to Paul’s message and wanted to hear more. A number of people in Athens did come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, including Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, who according to church tradition would later become the first church leader in Athens.

Paul had not only identified with both the Epicureans and Stoics but had also challenged them to the core of their beliefs. He had proven himself to be no mere babbler or one who scattered words around aimlessly. He had proclaimed to them the words of life, but the rest was up to them.

Devotional Thought
Paul was a particularly gifted thinker and preacher but what is most impressive here is that he was familiar with the beliefs of the people of his day and prepared to show them how the gospel both challenged their cherished beliefs and explained their unanswered questions. Do you make a serious effort to be just as prepared in our day as Paul was in his?

Acts 17:10-21

2011-08-08T06:50:00.000-06:00

In Berea
10 As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.
13 But when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. 14 The believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. 15 Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.

In Athens
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.

Dig Deeper
Many years ago I, while I was coaching high school basketball, I was asked one summer to coach a basketball team consisting of all-stars from our entire conference. This collection of the very best players in our conference would eventually go and play in a summer tournament against the very best players in our entire state. As we began to practice and prepare, however, I was a little worried. We had very good teams in our conference but they tended to fall into two different camps as far as their style of play went. Most of the teams were very high-powered and fast-paced teams that like to run-and-gun (a basketball term that refers to playing a less-physical, faster style that seeks to score a lot of points). A few teams, though, including mine, tended towards a much slower and more physical type of game that relied less on physical talent and more on precision and doing things well. The higher scoring teams and their players had learned how to play each other and had to learn how to play those slow-down teams as well. In the same turn, the slower-paced teams had to learn how to play teams like themselves as well as the running teams.

My worry stemmed from the fact that I knew that when we went to the tournament that we were going to play in, most of the teams we would be playing had a style that none of our players had really faced before. These teams would be physical, precise, and well-coached but they would also move, set picks, and cut at a fast pass and be willing to score quickly. They would have elements of both of the styles that our players had learned to play but it was a hybrid and was, therefore, a completely new style from what they had played. If they were not ready for all of the quick-moving picks and cuts, they would get run off of the floor. If they couldn’t learn to go up against that style they would be dead in the water and not get very far in our upcoming test.

Up to this point, Paul and his merry band of missionaries had faced many challenges and had preached the Bible to both Jews and Gentiles alike. They preached the same gospel to everyone but they had learned to adapt to the audiences in such a way so that the presentation of the gospel would be effective. The result was that many Jews and even more Gentiles were streaming into the kingdom of God. But there was a different sort of test on the horizon. As they moved farther away from Jerusalem and deeper into the Greek and Roman dominated worlds, they were going to come up against the Greek philosophies that dominated the Greek worldview of both philosophers and everyday folk alike. This would be a different challenge for the gospel and if Paul and the other Christians weren’t up to it, the gospel would have a hard time appealing to the rest of the known world. If they couldn’t learn to go up against the philosophers they would be dead in the water and not get very far in a world dominated by Greek philosophy.

After a tough go of it in both Philippi and Thessalonica where Paul had to leave prematurely, at least according to his own wishes, his concerned brothers and sisters sent Paul to a town that was described in the ancient world as an out-of-the-way town. Presumably the hope was to keep Paul under the radar for a bit, but Paul seemed far more committed to his mission of spreading the gospel everywhere he went than he was in staying low-profile. So as soon as he arrived in Berea, he went straight for the synagogue, as he usually did, and began to announce the good news of the risen Messiah, the true king of the world.

No explanation is given as to why, but his reception by the Bereans went beyond anything Paul had experienced previously. As much as Paul and Luke loved the Thessalonicans, they considered the response of the Beareans even more noble. The Bereans that heard Paul preach included a high number of rather prominent and important men and women but what made them noble in Luke’s eyes was that they didn’t trust in their prominence. In fact, they humbly acknowledged that they were in need of hearing the word of God and to accept the truths found therein. They pushed aside their worldly position and humbled themselves to God’s word. They were so hesitant to follow human wisdom that they eagerly examined the Scriptures each day, accepting it as the arbiter of truth, to determine if Paul was merely teaching things that itching ears might want to hear or if the portrait of Jesus the Messiah that he was presenting truly came from the words of Scripture itself and Scripture alone. And they showed their eagerness not just in reading through the word of God but by meeting with Paul daily, not just on the Sabbath.

As encouraging and wonderful as that little respite must have been for Paul (and as a teacher of the Bible I know how refreshing it can be to come across people with such an appetite for God’s word and a humility to match), it was not to last long. The Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was in Bearea preaching again and now had their chance to perhaps go there and finish what they had failed to do in their own town which was to shut Paul up permanently.

Once again, though, the believers were able to spirit Paul away, although it must have anguished him to know that once again the Spirit was allowing him to be led away from a town before he wanted to go. This time he would leave Silas and Timothy to strengthen the church as they were evidently able to stay a little more under the radar than Paul was. Paul would move on and send for them as soon as possible, this time landing in Athens. Athens was not the same important city that it had once been, but it was still an important center of thought, philosophy, and pagan belief. It would be the site of a stiff but necessary challenge for Paul and the gospel.

As Paul arrived in Athens, it dismayed him that such a center of earthly wisdom was so full of idols but it couldn’t have shocked him. Mankind’s problem from the beginning of human history has been that we would rather exalt our own flawed wisdom over the truth of God’s wisdom. In so doing, we emphasize one aspect or another of the creation over the creator, an act of idolatry. So whether it is statues of pagan gods or the god of materialism and everything in between the wisdom of the world will always set itself up against God’s truth. Athens would confirm what Paul would later write to the Corinthians, “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:21)

Once again Paul went to the synagogue to preach but he quickly caught the attention of two of the big-boy-groups on the block, the Epicureans and the Stoics. The Epicureans believed that pleasure was the highest aim in life and the most worthwhile pleasure was a life of peace and tranquility free from pain, overriding desires, superstitious fears, and anxieties of life. They denied the involvement of any gods in the affairs of men to the point that they were almost functional atheists. The Stoics sought to live consistently with all of nature and believed in the supremacy of the rational human mind as well as being autonomous and self-sufficient. They were more or less pantheists who believed that God was in everything. Stoics held that quality of life was more important than life itself so they encouraged suicide to escape a life that could no longer be sustained with dignity. As influential as they were in their time, there is much to learn from Paul’s upcoming response to these groups since we still see many of their beliefs and philosophies scattered throughout our world today.

We don’t know precisely what these great thinkers and philosophers thought of Paul but we do know that they didn’t hold in very high esteem. They referred to him as a “seed-picker” (babbler), a term that meant he was of worthless character, a man who scattered scraps of worthless learning here and there. They charged him with being a preacher of foreign divinities, a charge that was laid against other teachers such as Socrates before being put to death. When he did begin to share his teaching with them, these supposedly learned men could not even grasp what he was saying. It’s difficult to detect in English but verse 18 seems to indicate that when Paul began preaching of Jesus and resurrection (using the Greek word “anastasis” for resurrection) that they misunderstood him and thought, at least at first, that he was speaking of some new gods named Jesus and his female consort Anastasis. They likely would have thought that he was teaching about some new gods of “healing” and “restoration”.

Finally they brought him for a full hearing before the Areopagus but it was likely to have fun and mock him more than it was to give him a fair hearing. They wanted to hear this “new” teaching but in the ancient world something that was “new” was generally looked down upon especially compared to ancient things. Luke’s somewhat rare aside in verse 21 takes on a highly sarcastic tone and indicates that the Athenians were going to listen to Paul for sheer amusement of hearing out these strange new teachings.

If they knew anything, they new that the babbling of a seed picker wouldn’t amount to much more than a fun morning. Surely whatever new religious beliefs this fool was going to share with them it surely wouldn’t stand up to their mighty intellects and their ability to shred apart second-rate philosophies. Paul was about to face one of his stiffest tests yet to see if he could appeal to this hostile crowd and open their ears and hearts, through the moving of the Holy Spirit, to the truth of the gospel.

Devotional Thought
Despite the fact that the Athenians were apparently mocking Paul and trying to have a little fun at his expense, Paul looked beyond the personal insult and saw an opportunity to share the gospel. Are there any personal insults or “unfair” situations that you need to wade through or overlook in order to share the gospel with someone today?

Acts 17:1-9

2011-08-05T06:14:00.000-06:00

In Thessalonica
1 When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. 4 Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.

5 But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.[a] 6 But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, 7 and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” 8 When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. 9 Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.

Dig Deeper
When I was about 17 years old I wanted to get a job. I tried out a few places here and there but I didn’t last long at any of them, mostly because I was lazy and didn’t want to work hard. Then my older sister started to tell me about the place where she was working. It sounded like a blast. Nearly everyday she would come home and tell me of all of the funny things that happened at work and the funny and cool people that she worked with there. I got to thinking after a while that this sounded just like my kind of place. I wanted to “work” someplace where I could have fun and laugh a lot and enjoy the people and not really have to actually work very much. The job was doing data entry on computers so it was basically typing on a computer and I figured how hard could that be. So I went and took a job there. But once I got there I found that my sister had left out some vital details. Some of the people there were fun but she had only talked about a handful of people out of dozens and dozens. There were a few funny moments but those were actually usually a few seconds or minutes scattered throughout an eight-hour day. Most of the time the work was grueling and monotonous. You couldn’t play around that much because each person was required to get a certain amount of data entered each hour. That meant hour after hour of quiet work. I had so totally misunderstood the nature of that job that, although in retrospect, it wasn’t a bad job for someone my age, I hated every minute I was there.

Throughout the book of Acts we have seen something that is highlighted in this passage. There are times of comfort and blessing that come with our life in Christ but if someone were to tell you only about those things or stress them as the main experience and point of being a Christian, then you would get a completely wrong view of what it truly means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Jesus was and is the true king of the world and the Messiah. But that is only half of the story. Jesus was the kind of king that had to suffer in order to fulfill his true purpose. In the same way, Christians will find blessing and comfort in Christ, that much is true. But that is only half of the story.

As they continued through the region of Macedonia, reaching Thessalonica, Paul continued his normal pattern of using the local synagogue as his first stop. He would preach the gospel to the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles at the synagogue in hopes of forming a core group of disciples that would carry on the work of preaching the gospel and expanding God’s family in that region long after Paul left. When Paul first arrived in Thessalonica he specifically preached at the local synagogue for three Sabbaths before apparently moving on within the city itself. Surely Paul stayed there longer than just three weeks, though, as the book of Thessalonians makes clear that Paul worked in Thessolonica to support himself (1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:8) and also received aid several times from the church in Philippi while he was there (Phil. 4:16). That certainly implies a stay of longer than three weeks.

There is no doubt that Paul’s gospel announcement contained the same elements of preaching that he typically used wherever he went, but at this stop Luke emphasized the role and nature of the Messiah. Amongst Jews the early Christians tended to center on Jesus as the Messiah while they focused on Jesus as king among the Gentiles but both aspects of Jesus found a common problem in the suffering and death on the cross of Jesus Christ. A suffering ruler who died at the hands of his enemy didn’t sound like a very impressive Messiah or king. How could it be claimed that this man who came to suffer and die was now the king of the world? It was through the act of his resurrection from the dead. Paul declared in Romans 1:4 that through the resurrection Jesus was declared to the world to be the true son of God thereby making him both Messiah (Christ) and King (Lord).

In this role of suffering, though, was the real challenge of the gospel. It is what made it a stumbling block for the Jews and sheer foolishness for the Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23). Those who insisted upon a Messiah or king that lived up to the worldly expectations of power and might would never be able to embrace the truth of the Messiah. It wasn’t just that he unexpectedly suffered but pulled it out in the end by resurrecting. A careful look at the Old Testament Scriptures would demonstrate that Jesus had to suffer because that was always the kind of Messiah that God promised (see passages such as Ps. 2; 16; 22; 110; Isa. 53). It is not only vital that this aspect of Jesus is understood so that we will know him as he truly is but if we don’t understand Jesus’ role as the suffering servant then we will easily mistake ours.

Our world today is full of religious teachers (as was Paul’s) who are more than happy to tell you that God wants nothing but good things for your life because you’re one of his kids. All you have to do, we are told, is to have faith and the blessings will start rolling in. In fact, they’re already prepared for you even if you haven’t received them yet, you just to have to have faith. The problem is that this is so far from the full story and so incomplete that it can only rightly be called a false picture of Christianity. Christians are called to be God’s people that live by the values of the age to come, a time of completeness, sufficiency, and love for others. But to do that in an age of sin, darkness, and fallenness requires sacrifice. We live in an age where the people of the world live for their own best interests which creates large pockets of both surplus and lack, of both comfort and suffering.

The only way for God’s people to bring his economy of sufficiency into such a fallen world is to confront the selfishness and sacrifice for the poor and rejected. Thus, we are called to be people who, like our Messiah, willingly suffer for the benefit of others. We live by the values of the coming age and hope for that age and sacrifice for those that are suffering until that time comes. These are the thoughts echoed by Peter when he declared “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

Paul and Silas willingly suffered so that the gospel of the suffering Messiah might be brought to others and when they accepted it and believed, entering into his life, they were willingly taking on that road of purposeful hardship themselves. They were immediately immersed into this life as the Jews riled up some of the local riffraff to stir up trouble and persecute this young church. The young church was getting hammered from both sides. On one side, the Jews didn’t like their claims of Jesus as the Messiah and the fact that the Christians were quite successful in evangelizing the God-fearing Gentiles that had been worshipping at their synagogues (certainly it was appealing to hear that they could be full members of God’s family through faith in his life alone without all of the rigors of keeping the law and becoming Jewish through circumcision). On their other side, the Gentiles did not care for the claims of Jesus as the true king of the world. That sounded like a challenge to Caesar and would be dealt with harshly.

The mobs came to get rid of Paul and Silas but when they could not find them, they turned their wrath onto Jason, a new convert at who’s house Paul and Silas had evidently spent much of their time. It appears that Jason and the others were eventually let go under the condition that Paul and his companions had to move on. This is likely what Paul referred to when he wrote (most likely just a few weeks or months after leaving Thessalonica) “we were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you. For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, did, again and again—but Satan blocked our way” (1 Thess. 2:17-18). Paul’s sufferings, you see, weren’t just from persecution of non-believers. His sacrifice for the benefit of others didn’t end when he left that town. As Paul described in 2 Corinthians 11:28-29: “I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?”

Paul would face the agony of leaving a young church on their own under the care and provision of the Holy Spirit. He trusted the Spirit certainly, but still felt a strong parental bond towards them and cared deeply for them. Paul knew, and he demonstrated in every area of his life and ministry, that being a Christian is not about getting your share of the blessings all of the time but putting the interests of Christ and others ahead of his own (Phil. 2:3-5; 20-21).

Devotional Thought
Do you truly live each day for the benefit of others, being fully willingly to suffer and sacrifice in small ways or larger ways for the interests of Christ and others? What will it take for you to get to a point in your heart where you are fully prepared to do that?

Acts 16:25-40

2011-08-03T07:04:00.001-06:00

25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. 27 The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”

29 The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

31 They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” 32 Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. 33 At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. 34 The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household.

35 When it was daylight, the magistrates sent their officers to the jailer with the order: “Release those men.” 36 The jailer told Paul, “The magistrates have ordered that you and Silas be released. Now you can leave. Go in peace.”

37 But Paul said to the officers: “They beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out.”

38 The officers reported this to the magistrates, and when they heard that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, they were alarmed. 39 They came to appease them and escorted them from the prison, requesting them to leave the city. 40 After Paul and Silas came out of the prison, they went to Lydia’s house, where they met with the brothers and sisters and encouraged them. Then they left.

Dig Deeper
Not too long ago I came back home after a long day and was incredibly hungry. My wife was gone for the evening so it was up to me to make supper for my boys and myself. I decided to do something quick and easy and make some pizza. I quickly scooped up all of the ingredients that are necessary for making a good pizza and put them on the counter. First, I grabbed the items that go into making a crust and got that ready because you cannot have pizza without crust. Then I made the sauce and put that on the crust. After that I threw on the cheese and pepperoni while all the while the oven was pre-heating. Once I was done I took the pizza over by the oven, turned on the timer, and then I quickly cleaned up the kitchen. After that I went into my room and sat down on my computer to get some quick work down before the pizza was ready. I didn’t pay too much attention to the time, I just waited for that timer because by now I was starving. After what seemed like forever without the timer ringing, I went into the kitchen to look. The timer had only about 30 seconds left on it, which excited me. That is until I looked to the counter next to the oven and realized that I had never put the pizza into the oven. I had prepared all of the ingredients for a pizza but left out a key component of making a pizza. I had never put it in the oven to cook. I was none too thrilled as I had to reset the timer and begin my wait all over again.

This may seem rather elementary but there are actually many elements that go into “making” a pizza. You generally need to have a crust, sauce, cheese, and toppings, and then you need to cook the pizza. If you leave out any of those elements, you come up with something quite different and it just doesn’t work.

One of the key elements in the narrative of the book of Acts is to watch people becoming saved and entering into the kingdom of God, the life of Christ, as the gospel is spread further and further into the world going out from Jerusalem. Although people being saved into God’s family is a key component of Acts, this book is a narrative and not a recipe book so there is no one passage that ever says “here are the exact ingredients that go into someone being saved.” That’s not the point of the narrative. If you read my above narrative which is extremely condensed, you will note that how to make a pizza is not the point of the narrative, but you can go back through and pick out the necessary and important elements. So it is with the book of Acts. If you pick through the book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament you will be able to pull out the necessary elements of salvation into Christ although there is no such place that ever presents salvation in a formulaic fashion.

Let’s be clear, the analogy between the components of making pizza and the components of salvation is not a perfect one but there is one important point that comes from that analogy that we can apply to salvation. There are definitely different elements, or ingredients, when it comes to salvation in Christ. And just as you have a problem if you try to remove one aspect of making pizza, you have serious problems if you try to remove any of the important elements of salvation.

So what are the elements of salvation that we find in Acts and scattered throughout the New Testament? The first might seem painfully obvious but is important. We must first hear the message. Romans 10:17 says that “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” This leads into the next element which is faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6) and Mark 16:16 says that “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” But one must also repent in order to receive salvation. 2 Peter 3 and Acts 17:10 both say in effect that God wants everyone to come to repentance and Luke 13:5 says “unless you repent, you too will all perish.” One must also confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, a thought that is captured succinctly in Romans 10:9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” All of this culminates in being baptized into Christ. His victory over death is the subject of the preaching that we hear; his life is the object of our faith; his kingdom is what we repent to; his rule is what we submit to at confession and it is into him that we are baptized. This is why Peter commanded to those who wanted to be saved that they repent and be baptized into his name (Acts 2:38), and to write that the ark and water of Noah “symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (meaning that it is not just a ceremonial and symbolic cleansing but the absolute culmination of our salvation as we enter into the resurrection life of Jesus Christ) (Pet. 3:20-21).

And yet it is very popular today to say that those other elements are necessary but not baptism. Surely that is just a symbol. Surely you don’t have to do that to be saved. You just need that at some point to be obedient. But that would be like claiming that I didn’t need to stick my pizza in the oven in order to complete it. All of the elements of salvation are necessary. At different times the Bible seems to say that one must hear in order to be saved; at other times that we must believe; at other times we must repent; at other times we must confess; and still others say that we must be baptized. If we can take out one element like baptism and make that unnecessary, then can we do the same with any of the other four? Could we not just as easily claim that they are symbolic acts that could be done later? Could we claim that repentance or true belief aren’t necessary up front as long as they come at some point the way some would do with baptism? Could I claim that “belief” isn’t dictated in every single salvation account and must, therefore, be an optional element? Of course not. If you remove one of the ingredients you have a real problem. With pizza, the results vary depending on which ingredient you leave out. With salvation, if you remove any of the ingredients or change them from what they are biblically declared to be then you have something different altogether. When salvation comes, it must come wholly with all of the elements in tact.

As we return to the text, we find that after their beating, Paul and Silas found themselves locked in an extremely uncomfortable jail and unable to sleep. So rather than being stuck in their present circumstances they rejoiced and sang to God. They found their life in Christ to be a greater reality than where they were physically at the moment. The Christian will constantly be called to put the interests of others ahead of their own and this is just one more example (Phil 2:3-5). Paul and Silas would certainly suffer in prison but it would being lasting benefit to the jailer and his household. That is simply the way of life that Christians have been called to as we seek to emulate the life of the one who laid down his life for others.

At that exact moment, a mighty earthquake struck that shook open all the doors and enabled their escape if they so chose. But they had a larger agenda that went beyond their own personal comfort. This earthquake was no coincidence but neither was it sent in order for them to escape. There was no angel there this time telling them to come out (Acts 12:7-10). This earthquake was apparently for their jailer, not for them. When he awoke to realize that all of the prisoners might have escaped he was ready to kill himself rather than wait for it to be done for him (Acts 12:19). When he coupled the spirit and singing of these men (and quite possible the preaching that we might presume they did when they first arrived) with the power of this event but with no attempt to escape, this man was ready. His response was to the point and full of humility. What did he need to do to be saved?

The response was a shorthand one that signified the whole process of salvation. He must believe in the Lord Jesus, an act that presupposes hearing the gospel and which demanded repentance, confession, and baptism into Christ’s life. Even though it might seem that belief is separated and emphasized here that would be a cursory and mistaken assumption. Actually all five elements of genuine salvation are on display in this passage even though they might not be overtly mentioned. First, we can assume that this jailer had listened to them and heard the gospel before the earthquake, otherwise he would have no context for asking to be saved. We are then told that Paul told him that he must believe that Jesus is Lord which would entail him declaring and confessing that. We are then told that he bound up their wounds. This harsh jailer’s repentance is tangible and immediate as he changes from persecutor to comforter. Then we are told that this all culminated in the saving baptism that confirms all of the other elements. And it wasn’t just the jailer. All of the members of his household were brought in to hear the message and they also believed, repented, confessed and were baptized. He further showed his salvation and repentance by having Paul and Silas immediately released.

At this point, we might have expected for Paul and Silas to count their blessings, appreciate that their suffering had brought salvation to many, and to be on their way quickly and quietly. But once again, it appears that they were putting the interests of others ahead of their own. They were both Roman citizens and to be beaten and treated the way that they were without a proper trial was illegal. We simply don’t know why they didn’t bring up the issue earlier but it may have been that they brought it up only when it would be of potential benefit to others. We can only speculate that the Spirit kept them from doing so in order for them to fulfill their mission within that prison. But if they went quietly without saying anything, how might future missionaries or Christians be treated in this region? No, it would be better for Paul and Silas to point out the injustice so that it would at least give pause to the Roman officials in the future.

Rather than feeling like they had run Paul and Silas out of town and would do the same to any more like them in the future, the Romans were troubled upon hearing that these men were actually Roman citizens and not just some random Jews whose rights needed no respecting. They didn’t need any of the trouble that this might bring if it got out so they went out to appease Paul and Silas and make sure that things were at least amicable between them. Their attitude would presumably be quite different towards future missionaries now that they had to at least consider that they might be Roman citizens.

Before leaving town, though, Paul and Silas had one more stop to once again put the interests of others first. They would return to Lydia’s house to encourage the brothers and sisters. Putting others first, after all, isn’t a part-time job. It is not something that Christians do but someone that we become.

Devotional Thought
How can you truly put the interests of those around you first today? It takes time and effort because if we don’t really think about we are likely to spend most of the day doing what is best for us.

Acts 16:11-24

2011-07-27T06:59:00.000-06:00

Lydia’s Conversion in Philippi
11 From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day we went on to Neapolis. 12 From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district[a] of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days.
13 On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. 14 One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. 15 When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

Paul and Silas in Prison
16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” 18 She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.
19 When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. 20 They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar 21 by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”

22 The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. 23 After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. 24 When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

Dig Deeper
The state in which I live has gone through a tremendous amount of conflict and political intrigue in the last year. It all began, believe it or not, with a seemingly simple law from the new governor that public employees begin to contribute more to their retirement funds and health care plans due to the fact that the state was on the verge of financial insolvency. There have been cost-saving measures before both suggested and real but never had they received a response like this one got. The union leadership in our state went crazy and began to fight against these measures violently. They whipped their supporters into a frenzy and they basically took over the capitol building for weeks with coloful and rowdy protests. Politicians who supported them even spirited themselves out of the state and hid out so that the legislature could not be called into session to pass the bills.

What was intriguing about the fierce nature of the opposition was why it was so intense. Everyone agreed that the state was broke and something had to be done. Part of the proposal was that these unions would not be able to negotiate these areas in their contracts so that the cutbacks in state funding couldn’t just be averted in future contract negotiations. Many claimed that this was the problem, but most states and the federal employees don’t have these same negotiation rights so it would seem unlikely that this was the real cause. Slowly the real problem became apparent as to why the unions were so violently opposed to these seemingly common-sense measures. Part of the law proposed by the governor included the stipulation that employees could no longer be forced to be a part of a union at their workplace or have union dues taken from their paychecks automatically. They would have to choose to pay their dues and be part of their union. Now people can have different political opinions and that’s fine. In fact the point of this is not at all to be political. The reality here seemed to be, though, that the true cause of the violent opposition was that little stipulation which would all but wipe out the power of public sector unions. Whether you support them or oppose them, that was the real issue. If you mess with people’s money, you will get a fight but mess with their power and position and you will have a fight to the death on your hands.

As Paul and his companions went around ancient Asia, Turkey, and Greece preaching the gospel they knew that they were going to face opposition at nearly every turn but every now and then they would come directly into confrontation with the power source of a city or region. If you messed with that, the powers-that-be understood the danger to them and they would come out fighting fiercely. The punch-back can be brutal and Paul was about to experience that in a big way.

When they arrived in Philippi, things started out well. You couldn’t just go into most cities in the ancient world, especially Roman colonies like Philippi and walk up and down the street preaching whatever you wanted. That could be quite dangerous . Things would go much better to have some sort of place from which to preach, a base of operations so to speak. That’s at least one of the reasons that Paul would typically go to a synagogue in a city first and start preaching there. But Philippi apparently had no synagogue. There were so few Jews in Philippi that all Paul could find was a group of Jewish women who would gather together to pray regularly. Jews could not and would not start a synagogue without at least ten men, so these faithful women were doing the best that they could under the circumstances with what seems to have been a lack of the necessary number of men. So Paul found this place and began to preach to the women.

Special attention is paid to a woman who came from Thyatira in the region of Lydia which is likely why she was called Lydia. She was a merchant in purple cloth which meant that, to put it in today’s terms, you would not find her items at the local Wal-Mart. This was high end merchandise and it implies that Lydia was probably a rather wealthy and influential business woman, despite that fact that she was almost surely either unmarried or a widow.

Lydia was a God-fearer (worshipper of God) which meant that she was a Gentile that found something in the Jewish faith that went beyond the pagan religions with which she grew up. Yet she had not become a full-proselyte Jew. When Lydia heard the gospel preached she experienced an opening of her heart. Luke stressed the two-fold aspect of reconciling with God that is necessary for all who would hear his call. God must first open our blind eyes and soften our hardened hearts through his grace. This is what John Wesley referred to as prevenient grace. But God’s grace is not forced upon anyone, it is an opportunity. Given the opportunity, Lydia responded to God’s grace with obedience and humility by being baptized into the life and body of Christ (see Rom. 6:1-10; 1 Cor. 12:13).

Once she had been baptized into Christ, she was a believer and part of the family and now sought to help out her new brothers. They could use her house as a base of operations in Philippi. A new influential and important convert (in fact she was the first convert in Europe) and a place from which to work, things were starting to look up in Philippi. But the calm comes before the storm and the powers of darkness were about to amass rather quickly.

Just because they had a place to stay and work from though, did not mean that they would stop going to the prayer place, which was probably used by more than just Jews in the area. As they arrived they came upon a woman possessed by a spirit. The text is changed by most English versions to make it more accessible (in their estimation) to English readers, but the manuscripts actually read that this woman was possessed by the spirit of the Python. This meant that she was a follower of Apollo that engaged in oracles and fortune-telling. This woman was no scam artist. She was likely truly possessed by a demon spirit that gave her uncanny abilities.

Her response to Paul and his companions was reminiscent of the demonic response to Jesus who attempted to identify and name Jesus and his mission in an attempt to show superiority and dominance over him. This young woman began to follow them and scream at them. We can only imagine how annoying that would have quickly become, yet Luke doesn’t tell us why Paul let this go on for several days without any response. It is difficult to speculate but finally Paul became quite vexed and showed that this spirit did not have dominance over them at all. At the very mention of the authority of Jesus Christ, the spirit left and was gone. This woman had been healed and the situation fixed.

At least that would seem to us to be the logical conclusion to what happened. But this young slave girl had become quite a source of money, power, and prestige for her owners and Paul had unknowingly stepped into a hornet’s nest by messing with the economics and power of these people. Without the spirit of python in this girl, their position of power was under attack. But the dark demonic forces at work also knew the danger of the gospel taking foot in this town founded by retired Roman soldiers.

Paul and Silas were quickly going to bear the brunt of crossing the self-interests of the powers of darkness. They had not only threatened the economic and religious sensibilities of this deeply pagan Roman colony but there were also political undertones to all of this. How dare these Jews come in and tried to tell Romans what to do. Imagine a group of Jews declaring that they possessed some sort of freeing truth that Romans did not possess. How dare they.

They made the assumption that these were not Roman citizens and could treated as sub-standard interlopers but little did they know that Paul and Silas were both Roman citizens. Yet they did not bring this to light at this point. This is another mystery as to why they didn’t (although the reason might become more apparent in the next section) but things got ugly quickly and perhaps there was just no opportunity to do so. The magistrates ordered them stripped and beaten with rods, a punishment that was severe and swift.

One might ask at this point why Paul and Silas would endure such treatment but his answer to that mystery came in 1 Thessalonians 2:2-4: “We had previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition. For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts.”

As if that wasn’t enough, they were then thrown in jail under the guard of a jailer who was under strict orders to ensure that they didn’t escape. This jailer quickly proved to be no friend of theirs as he chained them up which would have been very restrictive and kept them from lying down or moving much at all. The jailer seemed quite willing to treat them harshly and show them no mercy.

Paul and Silas had taken on the forces of darkness and had paid dearly. They had shared in the suffering of their Messiah and things seemed like they couldn’t get much worse but when the powers of evil are their most ferocious and things seem the bleakest, that’s when God often does his best work. Paul, Silas, and that jailer would all soon find that out.

Devotional Thought
When things in your life go badly as they did for Paul and Silas in Philippi where does your mindset go? Do you start to feel badly for yourself or do you get excited to see what God is about to do in your life?

Acts 16:1-10

2011-07-25T07:40:00.000-06:00

Timothy Joins Paul and Silas
1 Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. 2 The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. 3 Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.

Paul’s Vision of the Man of Macedonia
6 Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 7 When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. 8 So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. 9 During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Dig Deeper
Coming out of college I was quite decidedly not a Christian and I wanted to be a teacher and historian for the rest of my life. Then my life changed fairly radically when I became a true disciple of Jesus Christ. I continued to be a teacher and coach for awhile but my priorities had changed and God’s kingdom had become the most important thing in my life with my roles as a teacher and coach simply becoming the context for me being a Christian and expanding the kingdom of God. My vocation as a teacher was no longer the most important thing in my life. Then I began to feel the call to go full-time into the work of the ministry and to leave teaching as my profession. This was a subtle calling, though, based on the input and advice of other people. Based on their opinions, I began to seek out God’s will through prayer and reflection and that seemed to also be guiding me towards going into the ministry. Yet at no time was it absolutely clear. It was a big decision to make, to leave what I thought I was going to do for my entire life to go a completely different direction. It would have been easy if the choice was obvious but it wasn’t. In fact, I had people tell me that they thought I should pursue God’s calling but wanted me to know that there were little to no actual ministry opportunities in our fellowship of churches where I was at and wouldn’t be in the foreseeable future. It’s one thing to walk across a bridge but it’s another thing to step out over a canyon on faith, hoping that a bridge will appear by the time your weight has shifted and your foot has stepped out into what looks like nothing but air.

Following the Spirit’s guidance and finding God’s will is a tricky thing. It’s not nearly as obvious as we would like. The reality is that the Spirit often leads us into blind alleys and demands a great deal of faith on our part. That’s what makes it so difficult to follow the leading of the Spirit. It’s generally not obvious. It can be, quite frankly, agonizing. We want to follow the Spirit or it wouldn’t be an issue at all, but how do we know this is the Spirit’s will and not ours? How do we know that this is not just us convincing ourselves to do something that we just really want to do? How do we know that we aren’t about to do something wildly foolish that wasn’t what God wanted at all? The questions to those answers don’t come easy but we can rest assured that our brothers and sisters in the book of Acts struggled with the same issues. They were constantly on the edge being led by a Spirit who seems far more dangerous than we would care to experience.

Luke doesn’t say specifically whether the decision to bring Timothy along with them on Paul’s missionary journey was a difficult one or not but it doesn’t take much speculation to know that it probably was a difficult decision. Paul had taken the young man John Mark with him before on a missionary journey and been burned badly when things got too difficult for Mark and he turned around went home. On top of that Paul had just went through a difficult disagreement and parting of the ways with his long-time friend and supporter Barnabas. Now he had chosen Silas, a man with whom he must have clearly connected on their trip from Jerusalem to Antioch and through the time that Silas stayed and ministered to Paul’s church in Antioch. Silas was a shortened term for his full name “Silvanus.” and he was almost assuredly the same man who co-authored 1 & 2 Thessalonians and was the scribe for 1 Peter (1 Pet. 5:12).

It seems that Silas would take the role left by the departure of Barnabas and now they were presumably taking Timothy to fill a similar role that Mark had filled on the previous journey. But it is unlikely that this decision was easy or obvious. Would Timothy do well on this demanding and difficult trek? Was he really the Spirit’s choice? Certainly Paul labored over his decision in prayer and sought the guidance of the Spirit. Then came that time when you have to step out in faith and act on the assurance that you have done your very best to seek the input of the Spirit and other believers.

There certainly would have been a fair amount of evidence for Paul to consider that Timothy was a reliable man of God, albeit very young, and that he was indeed the Spirit’s choice. Timothy had apparently been converted on Paul’s previous trip to this area (cf. 1 Cor. 4:17). His mother Eunice and grandmother Lois were both beloved Christians (2 Timothy 1:5) but his father was a Greek man who was not a Christian and was, it seems, dead by this time. Timothy, though a young man, was already being spoken well of by the Christians in his home area as he was already probably displaying the type of character that Paul described when he said of Timothy that “I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare. For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 2:20).

But once Paul had decided to take Timothy with him, there was one problem. He would have been considered an apostate Jew by other Jews because he was not circumcised. This could have proved to be a severe obstacle in his ministry trip with Paul so Paul encouraged him to go through the painful step of circumcision. Some see this, at least on the surface, as a contradiction for Paul who was so adamant that circumcision was not necessary for people to be part of God’s family. Paul was dead set against a Gentile like Titus having circumcision forced upon him (Gal. 2:3-5) and was crystal clear that it could not be required for believers who needed nothing more than the faith of being baptized in the life of Christ (Gal. 5:6; cf. Gal. 3:26-29). Ultimately, though, Paul was rather ambivalent about circumcision itself (Gal. 6:15; 1 Cor. 7:19). Paul was not against circumcision. He was against it as a requirement to be recognized as part of God’s family. But Paul was never one to hold blindly to simplistic consistency when a more sophisticated and mature line of thinking was required. He knew that general salvation and ministry have different requirements. There was no thought that Timothy needed circumcision to be in Christ but it was essential in order for him to be heard and accepted by the Jews in the places where they were going to share the gospel. What is not required for salvation can often be necessary for the spreading of the gospel (just as a degree in some sort of biblical studies program is not required to be a Christian but I have met many people who will not go to a church if the minister doesn’t have exactly that sort of training). This was one of those times.

Paul’s new missionary team began to travel around telling the other Gentile churches of the decision that had been made in Jerusalem, something that must have been a source of great joy for the believers everywhere, especially the Gentile believers. They evidently intended on continuing on into Asia to preach the gospel but, says Luke, the Holy Spirit not only kept them from going there but also deterred them from entering into Mysia to share the gospel as well although he doesn’t say why. Nor does Luke tell us what the nature of the Spirit’s guidance was here. It may have come through the means of prophecy, the inward guidance and resolve of the Spirit through prayer, or through external circumstances.

Paul’s journeys were a constant exercise in learning to follow the subtle guidance of the Holy Spirit and trust that they were doing the right thing. But is must have been very confusing and a great struggle to have plans to go into certain areas, only to become convinced that the Spirit was guiding them in another direction. Following the Spirit is easy when it’s obvious but it rarely ever is obvious, and we must assume that it was no easier for Paul and his companions than for us. So they prayed constantly and sought the Spirit’s guidance at every turn no matter how difficult and challenging his leading and prompting might be.

Just when they must have been wondering where in the world the Spirit did want them to go, Paul had a dream of a Macedonian man calling to him to come over to Macedonia and help. This would be a whole new area for the gospel to spread but it still must have been a difficult and challenging call for Paul. Was this dream the genuine prompting of the Spirit or was it just a dream? But these people needed help and Paul and his companions had the exact cure for that problem.

One other important thing apparently happened for Paul and his missionary team during their brief stay in Troas in addition to the dream. For the first time in the book of Acts the narrator switches from using the third person and begins to employ the term “we.” There several possibilities for this switch but the most likely and logical one is that Luke, the physician (Col. 4:14), joined the team in Troas. Although Luke is subtle and does not seek to bring any attention to himself, the team is now complete. Like an action movie that slowly assembles all of the pieces together before they move into the main part of the plot, Paul’s team is now set for the next part of their journey.

Devotional Thought
Do you ever find it difficult to find and follow the Spirit’s will in your life? What do you do in those times? How do you determine what the Spirit’s will is for you? Take some time to reflect and pray about that and ensure that your methods are biblical ones.

Acts 15:36-41

2011-07-22T06:11:00.000-06:00

Disagreement Between Paul and Barnabas
36 Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” 37 Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, 38 but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. 39 They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, 40 but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. 41 He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.

Dig Deeper
As Christians we know that we are called to love and unity. We are called by Scripture to be of the same mind with one another. Does this mean, however, that we will never have conflict or disagreements with other brothers? Of course, reality and experience tell us that this will not be the case. But what should we think of such situations? How should we respond? We find some important lessons to be learned in response to those types of questions in one of the more stunning passages in all of the New Testament. At the end of Acts 15, two great brothers in the faith who had worked together faithfully for years coming into such sharp disagreement that they felt it necessary to part ways and split their ministry. Rather than just viewing this as a sad and unfortunate blight on the early church, we must realize that it was a very important time from which we can learn invaluable lessons that will guide us through some of our most difficult times today.

In Acts 15 we are told of a decision by Paul and Barnabas to go back through their previously traveled ground and strengthen the churches (Acts 15:36). Out of this decision, however, a sharp disagreement arose between these two dear brothers over what we today might call their ministry philosophy. Barnabas thought that it would be a good idea to bring Mark with them but Paul thought quite differently.

Mark was the son of a Christian woman named Mary (Acts 12:12) and the cousin of Barnabas (Col. 4:10). He had been with these two great men of the faith on a previous missionary journey but abandoned the mission in Pamphylia to return to Jerusalem for unstated reasons (Acts 13:13; 15:38).

The difference in opinion may seem like a small one to use standing on the far-off peak of a mountain separated by a valley of nearly 2,000 years, but the disagreement was sharp enough that it cause the two brothers with such a long history together (Barnabas had initially vouched for Paul and caused him to be accepted by wary and fearful Christians who thought Paul’s conversion might be a plot, and had invited him into the ministry in Antioch) to part ways and apparently never work closely together again.

One of the questions that we humans always seem to need to know in a disagreement of this nature is who was in the right and who was in the wrong. That is a particularly difficult question when it comes to this issue because this was not a case of doctrinal purity or heresy in the camp. It was a difference of opinion over which aspect of the Scriptures to emphasize in this particular case. The difficult aspect of this situation is that a case can be made that both men were in the right in one sense, a situation that often leads to the most intense disagreements.

When we look at Paul’s argument it seems to have been sound and logical. Mark had been with them and failed. We don’t know the details but it is safe to assume that it greatly affected Paul and it was probably rather damaging at the time to their mission. After all, no one who puts his hand to plow and starts looking back is fit for the kingdom, right? (Lk. 9:62). There is a great danger in putting trust into one who has proven himself to be unreliable (Prov. 25:19) and being faithful is an absolute requirement for ministry in the kingdom of God (1 Tim. 1:12; 1 Cor. 4:2).

Acts 15:40 seems to imply that the church, at least in some initial way, may have agreed with Paul. Paul and Silas were commended by the brothers as they left but no mention is made of Barnabas and Mark. It may have merely been decided, though, that Paul would continue on the official mission while Barnabas was breaking away from that and going to cover ground that was not on the initial itinerary but would still be beneficial and would enable more ground to be covered in the long run. It might also simply mean that despite Paul’s breaking away from Barnabas, Luke emphasizes that the church was not going to cut Paul off and would support his journey, while their support of Barnabas would go without saying.

But before we jump to Paul’s side in this, we should consider Proverbs 18:17 which reminds us that the first to present his case seems like the way to go until another comes along and presents his case. Let’s look at this from the perspective of Barnabas. We are not told specifically of Barnabas’ reasons but based on his previous actions they are not too difficult to presume. It is safe to say that Barnabas was not defending Mark’s actions but he wanted to give him a second chance. Past sin and failure do not determine the future potential for faithfulness although they do need to be taken into account. I would be willing to bet that Barnabas might have pointed to Jesus giving Peter and all of the apostles a second chance after their initial failures. I would also imagine that Barnabas would have mentioned the times when he believed in Paul and gave him chances when very few others were willing. The Christian principles of forgiveness and grace seem to have been at the forefront of Barnabas’ beliefs and actions.

So who is right? You may have already come down on one side or the other, but I don’t think it’s necessary here. The Bible doesn’t clearly take any sides and neither must we. This seems to be one of those cases where the issue was a disagreement in which scriptural principles to emphasize. It was an honest to goodness difference in ministerial philosophy. There seems to have been no sin involved. Despite this dispute and subsequent parting of the ways of two great heroes in the faith, God’s kingdom continued on stronger than ever and both men were used powerfully by God. It is through situations like this, however, that we can learn some very valuable lessons for our own difficult times where issues are so often much more complicated than we would like them to be.

We wish that we didn’t have disagreements among brothers but the reality is that there simply always will be in the present age. Two godly individuals can sharply disagree over the directions of their ministries or whether another brother is ready to be counted on in the ministry, or a nearly endless cavalcade of possibilities but that does not mean that either one is acting in an ungodly manner, even if one or both sides have made mistakes. The reality is that God does not give us answers to every single judgment call that we must make in this age. We will never be free of mistakes and sincere differences of opinions until we all arrive safely in the age to come. Until that time we must firmly bear with one another and “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). There can be differences of opinion and mistakes will be made. That is the reality of the Christian life that we share in together (Phil. 1:6). Many of these differences and even partings of the way will hurt and be painful. Our task, however difficult it may be, is to do what is necessary to keep the bonds of peace and unity through even mistakes.

As Christians we are always called to step forward in love even with those that have hurt us, cursed us, or acted as an enemy. If this is how we are to react to our true enemies, then how much more with our brothers, even when they hurt us or feel like an enemy, or make a rash judgment or offer a harsh word? In fact, when someone most feels like my enemy or has hurt me the most, it is then and to them that I am called by Christ to step forward and show love. Not because I feel like it, but because that is who he is transforming me to be.

There is absolutely no indication or even hint that these two men thought any less of one another although this was surely an emotional time and situation. This was a rupture in their relationship and their ministry. It certainly hurt and could have caused hard feelings but later on we find Paul urging for support for Barnabas in his ministry (1 Cor. 9:6). That verse clearly demonstrates that Paul continued to love, value, and support Barnabas. Just because they could no longer work together did not mean that they did not love one another. Surely Paul and Barnabas made “every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

Although Paul certainly called for Christians to be of one mind in living out the life of Christ and urged that there be no divisions among believers (1 Cor. 1:10-12), that does not mean that there won’t be differences of opinion. It is possible to have differences that even lead to partings of the way without it rupturing the unity and brotherhood of believers. The unity of the family of God must be of higher priority than my opinion or even my brother’s mistakes. That is the Christian life that we all signed up for.

It is significant to note that neither brother is clearly commended or condemned in this parting of the ways. The Bible does not take sides in this issue and we don’t need to either in every situation. That does not mean that we overlook issues or don’t engage in them or help our brothers. It is quite possible, however, to engage in a situation and offer godly input and counsel without taking sides. We can see the right and wrong in both sides of the argument without splitting into different camps. Splitting into different camps is the worldly response to differences of opinion. Commitment to love and unity despite differences and hurt is how the followers of Jesus are to respond.

The separation of Paul and Barnabas might have seemed like a great victory for Satan but that was not the case. Even when we make mistakes, even stupid ones, we must always remember that God is far more powerful than I am stupid. God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28). That means that if we are all committed to loving God and following him, God can and will work even through our failures and mistakes. We might have disagreements but if we remain righteous even through hard times, God will work powerfully.

In the case of Paul and Barnabas, God took one team of church strengtheners and turned it into two. He doubled the ground that they could cover. It also gave a ministry opportunity to Mark and Silas that might not have been there otherwise. Because of this, more work could be done, more people could engage in the work of the kingdom, and the gospel could be furthered.

It is also true that this disagreement may have been a real struggle and trial for all of those involved, but God uses such situations to teach us strength, perseverance, and to make us complete (Jm. 1:3-4). Even though mistakes may have been made, they could learn from them. Mistakes only become failures when we fail to learn. When we learn from mistakes they become opportunities. For instance, Barnabas may have learned through this disagreement to be more watchful and demanding of Mark which may have had a large hand in the growth that he experienced. Paul may have learned to be more on the look out to be patient and sensitive as he was later in his ministry when it came to the issue between Philemon and Onesimus.

We have shortcomings and we will all fail. The brutal reality is that we all probably have both planks and splinters in our own eyes all of the time. We can play the blame game or we can be active in our unity, brotherhood, forgiveness, growth, and commitment to God’s family. Paul was certainly committed to his decision at the time and it may have worked out for the good, but it is true that he would later change his opinion of Mark. Their disagreement did not cloud his judgment in the future of Mark or their commitment to one another as brothers. He would later call Mark useful and asked that he be brought to help him (1 Tim. 4:11). This must have been very comforting and encouraging for both Mark and Barnabas and a great reminder that they were still brothers in Christ despite their past differences. We will have differences and we will hurt one another; that’s a promise. When the Scriptures call for Christians to bear with one another and forgive one another it is an implicit promise that we will hurt one another. Our love for Christ and our brotherly love can and must triumph.

The mere fact that Luke recorded this sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas shows that the church was not ashamed of it. It was a reality and important lessons could be learned. In the same way, we need not be ashamed of differences of opinion or disagreements as though they are all signs of weakness, sin, or disunity. They only become such things when we fail to learn lessons from these times or we fail to put the unity of brotherhood above our own opinion, feelings, and emotions. These are not times to be glossed over and covered up but are times to be openly discussed and learned from in the proper venues for those who are mature enough in their faith to handle such matters.

Devotional Thought
Paul and Barnabas clearly came into conflict but it is also clear that they were both sincerely attempting to put the interests of Christ first. Could you say the same about your relationships and even your conflicts that you come into?

Acts 15:22-35

2011-07-20T06:25:00.001-06:00

22 Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, men who were leaders among the believers. 23 With them they sent the following letter:
The apostles and elders, your brothers,

To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:

Greetings.

24 We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. 25 So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— 26 men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. 28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 29 You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.

Farewell.

30 So the men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. 31 The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. 32 Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. 33 After spending some time there, they were sent off by the believers with the blessing of peace to return to those who had sent them. [34] [d] 35 But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord.

Dig Deeper
Teachers and schools are notorious for giving their students long lists of rules that they have to follow. Some classrooms and schools have long lists of rules that each student must remember and follow each day while at school. I suppose that rules serve a purpose at times and can be quite helpful but there is also a downside to rules. Students who learn only to follow rules rarely learn how to actually think and discern through situations themselves. They will be quite prone to looking for loopholes in the rules and when they find themselves in situations outside of the prescribed rules they are generally at quite a loss. Rules tend to serve the purpose of conforming behavior and controlling people in the immediate moment. Rules are good controllers and conformers, but they are bad trainers and transformers. People who just learn to follow rules, you see, don’t usually mature and progress past those rules. They learn to follow those rules and that’s it. But they don’t learn how to think and live rightly regardless of the situation.

That’s why when I was a teacher I always had but one rule: You must show respect at all times for everyone else in this room. When you think about it that’s not much of a rule. That’s certainly not a rule that you can follow mindlessly. It is actually a guideline more than a rule. Guidelines are far more demanding than rules because they offer some general principles and then demand the one following them to really stop and think and learn from each situation. When different scenarios come up you must care enough about following the guideline and hold it as an important conviction to do the work of thinking through what it means to follow this guideline in this situation. As one does that more and more they grow and learn and mature. Rules teach you how to follow. Guidelines teach you how to think Surely if you give someone a rule you teach them how to act for a day but if you teach them to think through guidelines you teach them how to live for a lifetime.

This is exactly the kind of people that God has always promised that he would have: a thinking people. This is precisely what the prophet Jeremiah spoke of when he declared that “’The days are coming’, declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them’, declares the LORD. ‘This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time’, declares the LORD. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest’, declares the LORD. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more’” (Jer. 31:31-34). The point was that in the new covenant God would have a people that wouldn’t be just a bunch of followers of rules who would have to go and tell one another the rules and admonish one another to follow them. He would have a people who had chosen to be his people and in whom he had placed his own transforming Spirit. These people would know the Lord through intimacy and experience and would learn to think there way through situations.

It is for this very reason that the New Testament has precious few examples of actual rules. Instead we find mostly guidelines, principles, and suggestions which forced God’s people to think, to love, and to work out what it meant to be devoted to God and live together with other believers as his family. As the early church began to take on the difficult task of being the unified family that Jesus had called them to be, we find at the most difficult moments like these, that the directions given were not rules but were all about teaching the church how to think through the ongoing task of loving one another.

As the Council in Jerusalem convened, they knew that getting word back to the other churches was vital, especially to the center of the Gentile mission, the church in Antioch. But they also knew that if they simply sent Paul and Barnabas back to carry the decision of the leaders in Jerusalem that it could put them in an awkward situation which would leave them open to questions of whether they had faithfully communicated what had really been decided. To ensure that something like that didn’t happen, the brothers chose Judas and Silas, who were already well-respected brothers, to represent the church in Jerusalem and carry out this momentous decision to the larger Christian family.

There was obviously much confusion as men had come not that along ago and created havoc in Antioch by taking it upon themselves to drive a wedge between Jewish and Gentile table fellowship amongst the brothers. They had evidently either believed that they had some measure of authority from James and the Jerusalem church to do this or attempted to give the impression that they did. But the letter makes it clear from the beginning that these conservatives had stepped beyond their rightful authority. They were not speaking on behalf of James and the church in Jerusalem (a fact of which Paul was quite probably unaware when he wrote the letter to the Galatians but a matter which was now cleared up once-for-all).

The opening of the letter gives a further clue as to where it is heading when it says that they chose some men to verify the truth of the letter and to accompany their dear friends or more literally the “beloved” Barnabas and Paul. That must have put the brothers and sisters in Antioch at ease right away and allowed them a big sigh of relief. Paul and Barnabas were beloved Christians who were not leading them astray but guiding them into the truth of God’s family in the Messiah.

What is not certain is whether Luke has given us a word-by-word rendering of the original letter or an abridged version but he does include a phrase that has always been one of my favorites. The letter says that what they decided upon “seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” Christianity is a life that is the constant struggles of people of all different types learning to live together as one family. That simply cannot be defined by rules. But that also means the challenge of listening to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, working together to find solutions to thorny issues for which there is no rule or easy answer, and then making a decision as best you can. The council made no attempt to present themselves as infallible or even that they had the incontrovertibly correct answer. They were simply doing the best they could and making decisions based on what seemed right to them as they attempted to discern God’s will through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

As we saw in the previous passage, the agreement contained three specific areas in which they were asking Gentile Christians to be especially observant as they sought to live the holy lives of God’s family and avoid anything that might needlessly offend their Jewish Christian brothers and even non-Christian Jews with whom they might be living closely. There is much in the way of freedoms in Christ but where freedom and unity clashed, unity should always win. That is why Paul declared in his letter to the Galatians that they should “not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal. 5:13-14). All three categories discussed by Paul had to do with the way that Gentiles normally lived (the prohibition on sexual immorality probably referred more to aberrant marriage practices that were abhorrent to Jews) and as 1 Corinthians 6-10 demonstrates these weren’t simple straightforward rules. To carry out even these simple suggestions would take love, wisdom, discernment, and of course, the guidance of the Holy Spirit. These three guidelines are not comprehensive Leviticus-style rules. They are guidelines that would involve a great deal of thinking and love for one another.

The letter was obviously encouraging to the church in Antioch and Gentile believers around the world. God’s promise of having one family of all nations had overcome a stiff early challenge and would take a little time to enjoy the gifts that God had given to one another as Judas and Silas stayed for a bit to encourage the believers in Antioch.

There are two other important things that shouldn’t be missed with the sending out of this letter. The first was that the issue of the family of God as far as it concerned Gentiles being recognized was settled. The conservatives had lost and it had been recognized once-and-for-all that the Gentiles would need nothing more than entering into Christ to be part of God’s family. It would still take a long time to work out all of the details of how to do that on a day-to-day basis but the important part was now decided. The other thing to note is that the Jerusalem church calls the Gentiles to live lovingly towards their brothers but never binds these as rules. They would “do well” to follow them and of course if they really loved God and his family then they would have no problem with these things but it never binds these things as rules. It was about the heart and not rules. They were learning to live for a lifetime not for a day.

Devotional Thought
Do you really embrace the hard work of thinking through and living out the call for Christians to love one another and put the interests of others ahead of our own or do you tend to seek the easy way out by falling back on fulfilling the obligations of a few things that you have turned into rules? For instance, do you have time with God every morning or meet with other believers because you have truly thought through the implications of what those things mean to do or not do or do you just muddle through them as an obligation? Take some time today to truly think about what you do and why you do it.

Acts 15:12-21

2011-06-03T06:14:00.002-06:00

12 The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. 13 When they finished, James spoke up. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. 14 Simon[a] has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. 15 The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:

16 “‘After this I will return
and rebuild David’s fallen tent.
Its ruins I will rebuild,
and I will restore it,
17 that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,
even all the Gentiles who bear my name,
says the Lord, who does these things’[b]—
18 things known from long ago.[c]

19 “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. 21 For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”

Dig Deeper
One of the great sports movies of all time is “Hoosiers,” the classic film about high school basketball in a small town in Indiana. The sleepy town of Hickory loved nothing more than basketball and the entire community became deeply concerned when the school’s principal hired an old pal who had previously been a big city college basketball coach. They were wary of this outsider from the outset but became even more concerned when his ways were proven to be very different than what they expected and what they wanted. To add to that, the town’s best player had decided to focus on his studies before the coach ever came to town and had declined to play that season. Suddenly a town that expected a certain level of play and a certain number of wins wasn’t seeing either one. Midway through the season the whole town held a meeting to air their concerns with the ultimate purpose of kicking this new coach out of his job before his strange ways changed everything that they cherished. Several people stood up and spoke on behalf of the coach and tried to answer his accusers and their thoughts carried some weight but none of those that spoke carried enough weight on that topic to sway people. The vote was taken and the coach was voted out of his job. But then a young man in the back stepped forward to speak. He was the star player that had refused to play up to that point. He suddenly and simply said that he thought it was time for him to start playing again. He interrupted the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd to add one more detail. He would only play if the coach stayed. Everyone was shocked but his was the voice that mattered in this instance. They quickly took another vote and it was determined that the coach would stay. The loudest voice in the room had spoken and it had changed everything.

Paul and Barnabas had addressed the entire assembly as witnesses of all that they had seen God doing among the Gentiles but they probably carried little sway with the group that they addressed in Jerusalem. They were more presenting their testimony than they were convincing anyone. Before that the Apostle Peter stood and verified that he believed that it was part of God’s plan all along that the Gentiles did not need to follow the law to show themselves to be part of God’s true family. They did not, in other words, need to become Jews in order to become part of the promised family. That was never the intended purpose of the law and there was no sense in demanding that that become its purpose now.

Peter’s voice was no doubt influential and important within the community of Jewish believers and the leadership of the church but it appears that by this point Peter was more of a traveling apostle and was not the official leader of the Jerusalem church. As important as his voice might have been, he did not carry the most influential opinion on this topic and in this situation.

That distinction belonged to James, the brother of Jesus. He had been a skeptic of Jesus during his lifetime (Jn. 7:4-5) but evidently an encounter with the resurrected Jesus Christ had made a deep impact on James (1 Cor. 15:7). James had, at some point, become the recognized leader of the Jerusalem church and a looming figure in the early Christian community. He was well known for his piety and fairness even among his Jewish opponents in Jerusalem. He would eventually be stoned to death at the Temple, an act that was grieved over by Christians and many Jews alike. In short, he was well respected by nearly all, and certainly by most within the Jerusalem church. Beyond that, he had apparently been somewhat concerned fairly recently about the issue of just blatantly accepting Gentiles into the table fellowship of the family (see Gal. 2:12; although James seems to infer here that that group may have come from Jerusalem as Paul stated but they went beyond any actual authority given to them by James at the time).

When James rose to speak, his voice carried a great deal of weight. He was an established conservative on this issue, he was well trusted, and was well respected. He would, evidently, have the final word on this matter as he called the assembly to listen to his thoughts. Peter had appealed to logic and history to help the case. Paul and Barnabas had spoken of the great signs and wonders to which they had been witness. James would appeal to Scripture and the identity of God’s people.

As James began his important comments, he made a fascinating but easily missed point about Simon Peter’s words. In the Old Testament there were two primary groups of persons. There were the “nations” (“ethne” in the Greek) or the “Gentiles” and then there were the “people” (“laos” in the Greek) The people were God’s chosen group, that is to say, Israel. This is the thought behind a passage like Deuteronomy 26:19, which says, “He has declared that he will set you in praise, fame and honor high above all the nations he has made and that you will be a people holy to the LORD your God, as he promised.”

But James turned that on its head by declaring that Simon Peter has described God intervening to choose and create a people from within the Gentiles. The “people” of God were now comprised partly of the nations rather than standing in opposition to them. In making that statement, James had already tipped his hand as to where he was heading.

But that wasn’t just Peter’s opinion. The prophets said the very same thing. That was a big deal because in the Old Testament the prophets were God’s mouthpieces. So if it could be shown that they pointed to such a thing as the nations being brought into God’s family as they were without first needing to become Jewish or follow the law then that would be very important. His words in verses 16 and 17 come from Amos 9:11-12. Amos 9 is part of a harsh prophecy in which God declared that Israel would be judged for her unfaithfulness to God and his covenant, and be brought low. But, Amos promises, once the house of David has been humbled it would be rebuilt and that time of restoration would include all of the nations (ethne) or, in other words, the Gentiles. It wasn’t that James could only muster up one obscure passage to make his point but what Luke has recorded was one representative point from the larger argument that James was making. The crux of his statements were that God’s promise of a blessed family always included the people of the nations and the prophets had confirmed that. The rebuilding of the house of David was being fulfilled through the Messiah which meant that the time for the Gentiles to be included in that promise had come.

If God had promised the inclusion of the Gentiles into the one family of all nations then why would they try to bind something on the Gentiles that wasn’t necessary. Entrance into God’s family would come through Christ alone and the evidence or uniform of that entrance would be that they followed Jesus and lived by faith in his life alone. There was nothing inherently wrong with the law but it was not the entry point into God’s family, nor was it the uniform of his people any longer. God’s temporary law-shaped family had, through Jesus Christ, become his permanent Messiah-shaped family.

But if all of that was true, then why would James go on to suggest that there were four specific things that the Gentile believers should avoid? Was James contradicting himself by saying that they didn’t need to follow the law from one side of his mouth and then giving them portions of the law to observe out of the other side of his mouth? It appears that the four suggested prohibitions were those that were most obviously and overtly connected with pagan worship and Gentile immorality in the eyes of the Jews. They should avoid, James was suggesting, meat that was sacrificed to idols; sexual immorality that was common among pagans (this went beyond just obvious things like fornication but would likely have included aberrant marriage practices such as bigamy and issues brought up in 1 Corinthians 5 that were abhorrent to the Jews), including perhaps the cultic sexual practices that had become common at the shrines and temples of the gods; meat from animals that had been killed by strangling; and the blood of animals which was a common element in temple worship settings.

The reality was that as the gospel moved further away from Jerusalem, the Gentile believers would still be living next to Jewish communities and worshipping with Jewish believers. If they were going to be a light to the Jews and live in harmony and full table fellowship with their fellow Jewish Christians then they had to truly become a people that put the interests of others ahead of their own. James had removed a major stumbling block for Gentile believers in being full members of the family in the eyes of others but he was also suggesting that the Gentile believers remove the major stumbling blocks for their Jewish brothers and sisters to fully accept them. This was pure compromise.

This passage stands as an important testament to the fact that the unity of the early church was hard fought. They didn’t have to agree on everything to be unified. True unity means that the community of believers are devoted to putting the interests of the entire group ahead of their personal desires or freedoms. What was “right” and “wrong” was important if it infringed on one’s true status in Christ but beyond that, what was far more important was living at peace with one another. The Jewish believers would not try to add regulations to the Gentile believers identity in Christ, and the Gentiles would would show patience and respect in limiting themselves in areas that were clearly sin (things like the sexual practices, some of which they should have been avoiding anyway) and things that weren’t (such as avoiding blood). As Paul would make clear in passages like 1 Corinthians 6-10 and Romans 14-15, their love for one another and their commitment to being a unified family should always trump their own preferences and opinions.

There is a dual reminder in this passage for the modern church to both embrace one another in unified love with no needless offense as well as a pointed poke in the ribs to remind us of the potential danger of thinking so highly of our opinions or preferred practices that we can actually harm the unity of the fellowship of the community.

Devotional Thought
Which do you value more: Your rights and freedoms in Christ, or the unity of the body of believers and the interests of others? What can you do today to add to the unity of your family in Christ?

Acts 14:8-20

2011-05-18T06:38:00.000-06:00

In Lystra and Derbe
8 In Lystra there sat a man who was lame. He had been that way from birth and had never walked. 9 He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed 10 and called out, “Stand up on your feet!” At that, the man jumped up and began to walk.

11 When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” 12 Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. 13 The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them.

14 But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: 15 “Friends, why are you doing this? We too are only human, like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. 16 In the past, he let all nations go their own way. 17 Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” 18 Even with these words, they had difficulty keeping the crowd from sacrificing to them.

19 Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead. 20 But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe.

Dig Deeper
I am personally convinced that one of the most powerful, and potentially dangerous, human motivators is disillusionment. Disillusionment is quite different than many other human emotions and motivators because it can swing someone’s motivations, loyalties, and actions wildly and erratically in the blink of an eye. One moment someone can be deeply in love with someone but once disillusionment sets in that love can radically switch to blind rage and vitriol in the matter of seconds. This is particularly true when it comes to the church. It is vitally important that churches and ministers do their dead-level best to ensure that new Christians and younger members have a realistic view of the church. It is quite easy for a young Christian to to come and visit a church and quickly fall in love with everything about it. If the members of that church are not extremely careful and wise, they can easily, in their zeal, give the impression that everything about the church is wonderful, that the minister is the best thing since sliced bread, and that their life will simply be better in every way imaginable if they become part of the believing community.

The problem is that no church is perfect. Every church is flawed because all humans are flawed. The New Testament promises that we will need to have great patience, forbearance, and love for one another because we will fail one another. But if people are not clear on all of that they will come to idolize the church, the minister, or certain Christians within the church. The problem is that it is only a matter of time before they realize that the church is flawed and people are not perfect, despite their genuine desire to live as God’s family. That’s when disillusionment sets in and people who were once loyal and loving members of a church can easily become bitter enemies in an instant. What they once revered they now would like to destroy.

In fact, the greater someone’s hopes are built up before being dashed, the deeper the disillusionment and the greater the bitterness. At the core of this account is that very reality of disillusionment. Great hope was put before the people but they misunderstood. It was not what they thought and what they were hoping for and so their great adoration and amazement turned almost instantaneously into hatred.

As Paul and Barnabas arrived in Lystra, they encountered a man that had been lame and unable to walk since birth. Everyone would have known him well and been quite convinced of the fact that he would never walk. In fact it is safe to presume that him being healed and walking never even crossed their mind. But as Paul came to town this man listened intently. Something about the announcement that Jesus had resurrected from the dead and showed himself to be the true king of the world and that the kingdom of God was breaking into the present world through that resurrection must have caught the attention of this man. As Paul was speaking we can assume that the Spirit drew his attention to this man, although the text doesn’t say that explicitly. Paul saw an opportunity to demonstrate the kingdom of God. It would be a manifestation in the present age of God’s future age to come, a time when God will restore the entire creation back to its intended wholeness. Nothing demonstrated that truth better than healing a man who had been lame from birth. Nothing verified the truth of his words about that coming age more than telling this man to walk.

As Paul spoke, he discerned, again presumably through the guidance of the Spirit, that this man had the faith to be healed. This man had come to faith through Paul’s words. It wasn’t that he believed that he could be healed because that wasn’t even an option yet. But he had come to believe that God had given promises to restore his creation and that those promises were being fulfilled through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and now through the preaching of the gospel. Because he had faith in that, Paul would heal him and show a sample of that coming reality. Paul told him to stand up immediately and walk, something that the man did instantly. We can only imagine the shock of the crowd around them as they observed the pure and bewildering joy that the man must have felt and the confident lack of shock on the faces of Paul and Barnabas. His getting up and walking was of no great surprise to them. To the crowd, this was the most incredible thing they had ever seen. And they immediately jumped to conclusions.

We must understand that there was a local legend preserved in a Latin poem by Ovid. According to this legend, the gods Zeus and Hermes had visited this region looking for lodging many years before. They were turned down at house after house, and were eventually sent away by one thousand homes in the area. Finally the pair of gods came upon an elderly couple named Philemon and Baucis who were unaware that they were having an encounter with the gods. They eventually welcomed the divine pair into their home. The gods later returned and turned the home of the elderly couple into a temple in honor of their hospitality but they were enraged with the rest of the region and they destroyed all of the houses that had rejected them.

As Paul and Barnabas came upon the scene and performed such an incredible and miraculous healing, the people immediately interpreted it in the only way that their worldview would allow. These must be the gods returned to earth. It is possible that Barnabas was the larger and more physically dignified of the two and so they mistook him as Zeus, while Paul was mistaken for Hermes who was the spokesmen for the gods. Whatever the case, they were clearly determined not to make the same mistake that their people before them had. The people went shouting and declaring in Lycaonian that the gods had returned to them and they quickly got busy making the proper preparations to honor them with appropriate sacrifices. The scene was no doubt chaotic and dizzying along with the fact that neither Paul nor Barnabas spoke that language or knew what was happening around them.

Upon finally understanding what the crowds were thinking and what they had in mind, Paul and Barnabas were horrified. They tore their clothes in response to this well-meaning, but blasphemous attempt to honor them. In that act, the people were demonstrating that they truly had no understanding of the one, true God. They weren’t gods that typically brought varying degrees of bad news and destruction. They were men just like them that were there to preach the good news about Jesus Christ.

Paul’s words were thoroughly in the style of the Old Testament as he warned them that the gods and idols they worshipped were lifeless and worthless. They were wasting their time worrying about the favor of the gods, because the favor of the one, true God, the one who created the world and everything in it, had been finally made available to all. In the past they were outside of God’s family with little hope to come into it (see Eph. 2:11-19). God had always been there, though, providing through nature and they should have recognized that but they had turned instead to worshipping elements of the creation (cf. Rom. 1:18-23). This sermon as Luke has recounted it looks very similar to Paul’s sermon in chapter 17 and no doubt continued on to describe the good news of the resurrection of Christ just as he did there.

But the people were so locked into their own worldview that despite Paul’s powerful sermon pointing them to the true God through his Son Jesus Christ, they still had trouble shifting their paradigm and still wanted to make sacrifices to them as gods. The reality is that false religions stem from people’s desires rather than the other way around. This is why Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:3 that it is not that people are tricked into false religions and false doctrines but rather that they gather around them people that teach what they want to hear based on their desires. These people wanted the type of religion that they had already and despite the incredible miracle they had just seen were apparently not open to the stunning truth of the gospel.

If their desire had been for the truth that lies in the gospel they would have embraced it but instead, Luke tells us, that a group of Jews came over from Antioch and Iconium, and convinced them to reject what Paul and Barnabas had been saying. These people who wanted to worship Paul and Barnabas were now quickly swung in the other direction. They were enthralled thinking that the gods that they desired to worship had come to visit them but their excitement quickly turned into disillusionment. Their moment of hope that the gods had returned and they had a chance to please them disappeared. All that was left was the simple truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the men who were preaching that gospel. Their dashed hopes turned to blind rage and they dragged Paul outside of the city to stone him.

This was no day at the beach. Stoning was a violent act that was intended to kill someone and they thought that this time was no different. Although it didn’t kill him, the event clearly left an indelible impression on Paul who mentioned it as many as three times in other writings (2 Cor. 11:25; 2 Tim. 3:11; and possibly Gal. 6:17). What happened next is one of those incredible things that has made Paul a hero to many in the faith ever since. He had been rejected and beaten down by those who wanted nothing to do with the idea of being part of God’s family but the disciples gathered around him and gave him strength. Buoyed by their love and support, Paul rebounded and got right back up (Luke does not say that there was any specific miraculous element to Paul’s getting up and does not seem to imply any such miracle either). We might expect him to have gone somewhere safer and immediately flee Lystra but Paul was not going to let them get the best of him and the gospel. He picked himself up and walked right back into Lystra. Paul would leave for Derbe the next day, but it would be on his terms and not because of fear.

Devotional Thought
Can you identify with Paul’s situation here. It is unlikely that most of you reading this will ever be in danger of being stoned for the gospel but it can sure feel like it sometimes when we are rejected or mistreated for our faith. When that happens, what is your response? Is it to slink away and look for safety or is it to surround yourself with disciples, get re-energized, and go right back at the leading of the Holy Spirit? When you face your next “Lystra,” what will your response be?

Acts 14:1-7

2011-05-12T05:23:00.000-06:00

In Iconium
1 At Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Greeks believed. 2 But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the other Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. 3 So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders. 4 The people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, others with the apostles. 5 There was a plot afoot among both Gentiles and Jews, together with their leaders, to mistreat them and stone them. 6 But they found out about it and fled to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe and to the surrounding country, 7 where they continued to preach the gospel.

Dig Deeper
Many Christians these days seem to have a real problem with Christianity. Oh, they love certain aspects of it, like maybe the traditions, the encouragement that it can bring, and the camaraderie but there are also aspects of it that they do not like. People who claim to be Christians themselves are almost embarrassed at the idea of Christianity being divisive in any way. They have instead turned Christianity into a sort of universal catch-all where any beliefs are welcome and they don’t want to create waves at all. They cringe at and denounce anything Christian that actually divides the saved from the lost, the disciple from the wanderer.

As trendy and popular as that sort of Christianity has become in our world of tolerance, it stands in stark contrast to the beliefs and practices of the first century. This can be difficult because it is not acceptable in our culture to claim a singular truth. It is deemed offensive and arrogant to do so. But at the heart of the gospel message is the truth that Jesus claimed that he was “the way, the truth, and the life,” and that no one could come to the Father but through him (Jn. 14:6). Jesus also made it quite clear that his gospel would cause division: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (Lk. 12:51-53). The message of the gospel that brings peace to those who accept it is so demanding and challenging that most will not accept and that automatically causes division.

Nearly every religion, of course, makes truth claims at one level or another. That is important because truth claims necessarily separate those that accept those truth claims from those that don’t. What sets Christianity apart, however, is that it is the only religion, philosophy, or worldview that can actually plausibly back up its claim to be truth. The vital question to ask here is how do we determine that a religion or philosophy is true? Nearly all religions and philosophies that seek to answer that question respond by saying that an adherent will simply know within themselves that this is true. It is that inner witness and confirmation which will tell them that their beliefs are true. But that is not what the early Christians staked their claim on. In the first 19 verses of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul makes it quite clear that the veracity of the Christian faith lies in the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If it happened as claimed then Christianity is true and Jesus really is the rightful savior and Lord of the entire world. If it never happened, then Christianity is a sham and a waste of time.

Armed with the resurrection as the core of the truth of the gospel, as Luke has made clear throughout the book of Acts, the disciples went around boldly proclaiming the gospel. But just as surely as they preached the resurrection of Christ wherever they went they also encountered sharp opposition wherever they went. It was something that they could expect. Jesus had told them as much, saying “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matt. 10:22). Wherever they went the gospel divided between those who wanted the light that was revealed through the preaching of the truth of the word of God and those who hated the light and chose to stay in the dark. It’s a truth that we must firmly understand and accept or the Christian walk will always be painful and unbearable. Preaching the truth will not be popular; it will not always produce results; and it will always cause division and opposition.

As was their usual custom, Paul and Barnabas began their preaching Iconium at the synagogue. It served as a good based to reach out to the Jews and Gentile God-fearers. Those who were waiting for God to act on his promises and were open to the truth of Jesus being the Messiah and fulfillment of those promises were quick to believe so the mission in Iconium met some early success. But that did not mean that things were all pleasant. The Jews who refused to accept the truth of the gospel were not content to simply reject it and walk away. They, like Paul once was, were determined to show their zeal for God’s ways by fighting and hopefully destroying this new upstart Messianic movement. So they stirred up the Gentiles, presumably both the God-fearing Gentiles and the pagan Gentiles, by slandering the gospel and urging them to actively oppose and persecute the Christians.

Without the fully established witness of the word of God as contained in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit confirmed their message through the means of signs and wonders. Luke doesn’t specifically recount what those were in Iconium, but they no doubt included the same sorts of things like praising God in languages that were previously unknown to the speaker and miraculous healing as they had performed in other places. These signs were not meant to impress so much as to demonstrate the values and principles of the age to come. Through the preaching of the gospel and the establishment of the kingdom of God, the elements of that future age were breaking into the present age. The manifestations of that, the signs and wonders, were confirmation that access to that age of eternal life really was available through the Messiah just as they claimed.

As Christianity will do, their message divided the city. To some it was foolishness. To others it was a stumbling block and a scandal. But to others, they saw in the gospel presentation, the power of God. The life of God’s age to come really had broken into the present age through the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah and had been made available not just to the Jews but also the Gentiles.

It appears that there was a bit of lag time between the arrival of Paul and Barnabas in Iconium and the time that the persecution against them gained traction. Luke doesn’t tell us how much time they were able to spend there but it was enough time that they were able to establish the core of a Christian community when they left. God had established a window for them of just enough time to do what they needed to do there and then get out before the persecution got too stiff. Eventually a plot somehow came to their attention that their lives were in danger and God had more work for them to do. It is important to note that the reason they left was not because their lives were in danger or because they were afraid but precisely because it was God’s plan and will that they continue on in the mission. When the time came for them to face death, they would do that without flinching, as men who believed firmly in the resurrection of those in Christ.

Upon leaving Iconium, Paul’s group would head Southwest to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe. This was no normal escape or vacation, however. They went there to continue their mission of preaching the gospel. This illustrates the importance of understanding the true nature of the gospel. If we rightly understand that the true gospel is the victory proclamation that Jesus is God’s promised Messiah who has defeated death through his resurrection and shown himself to be the true King and Lord of all people, and that the only proper response is to obey that proclamation by laying down our own lives and will, and entering into the body of believers that is God’s family, and to live according to his will by putting the interests of the family of believers ahead of our own personal interests, then the path becomes clear. Wherever we go we can’t help but to declare this truth and live out the reality of the kingdom of God on earth. We realize that we are God’s people, called to live together as his family that is imperfect in this age but dedicated to the proposition of living here and now as a people that are committed to the values, principles, and realities of that future age. If this is our true mindset then we will naturally spread the gospel wherever we go.

If, however, we are confused on all of this and think of salvation as a personal issue between God and myself that does little more than change my future from an eternity in hell to one in heaven with God, then evangelism becomes a very different animal. It becomes something that I must constantly do rather than who I am. It becomes a task of which I can tire rather easily instead of a constant expression of the recognition of who we are in Christ and an ongoing expression of gratitude for calling us to be his family. It is when we really grasp that fully that we too will continue to preach the gospel wherever we go.

Devotional Thought
What is your attitude about evangelism? Is it something that you have to do or is it a natural expression of who you are? As you share your faith with those that need to hear the gospel have you embraced the fact that it will be divisive and not necessarily make you the most popular person? Why is that an important truth to grasp?

Acts 14:1-7

2011-04-29T05:00:00.000-06:00

In Iconium
1 At Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Greeks believed. 2 But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the other Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. 3 So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders. 4 The people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, others with the apostles. 5 There was a plot afoot among both Gentiles and Jews, together with their leaders, to mistreat them and stone them. 6 But they found out about it and fled to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe and to the surrounding country, 7 where they continued to preach the gospel.

Dig Deeper
Many Christians these days seem to have a real problem with Christianity. Oh, they love certain aspects of it, like maybe the traditions, the encouragement that it can bring, and the camaraderie but there are also aspects of it that they do not like. People who claim to be Christians themselves are almost embarrassed at the idea of Christianity being divisive in any way. They have instead turned Christianity into a sort of universal catch-all where any beliefs are welcome and they don’t want to create waves at all. They cringe at and denounce anything Christian that actually divides the saved from the lost, the disciple from the wanderer.

As trendy and popular as that sort of Christianity has become in our world of tolerance, it stands in stark contrast to the beliefs and practices of the first century. This can be difficult because it is not acceptable in our culture to claim a singular truth. It is deemed offensive and arrogant to do so. But at the heart of the gospel message is the truth that Jesus claimed that he was “the way, the truth, and the life,” and that no one could come to the Father but through him (Jn. 14:6). Jesus also made it quite clear that his gospel would cause division: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (Lk. 12:51-53). The message of the gospel that brings peace to those who accept it is so demanding and challenging that most will not accept and that automatically causes division.

Nearly every religion, of course, makes truth claims at one level or another. That is important because truth claims necessarily separate those that accept those truth claims from those that don’t. What sets Christianity apart, however, is that it is the only religion, philosophy, or worldview that can actually plausibly back up its claim to be truth. The vital question to ask here is how do we determine that a religion or philosophy is true? Nearly all religions and philosophies that seek to answer that question respond by saying that an adherent will simply know within themselves that this is true. It is that inner witness and confirmation which will tell them that their beliefs are true. But that is not what the early Christians staked their claim on. In the first 19 verses of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul makes it quite clear that the veracity of the Christian faith lies in the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If it happened as claimed then Christianity is true and Jesus really is the rightful savior and Lord of the entire world. If it never happened, then Christianity is a sham and a waste of time.

Armed with the resurrection as the core of the truth of the gospel, as Luke has made clear throughout the book of Acts, the disciples went around boldly proclaiming the gospel. But just as surely as they preached the resurrection of Christ wherever they went they also encountered sharp opposition wherever they went. It was something that they could expect. Jesus had told them as much, saying “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matt. 10:22). Wherever they went the gospel divided between those who wanted the light that was revealed through the preaching of the truth of the word of God and those who hated the light and chose to stay in the dark. It’s a truth that we must firmly understand and accept or the Christian walk will always be painful and unbearable. Preaching the truth will not be popular; it will not always produce results; and it will always cause division and opposition.

As was their usual custom, Paul and Barnabas began their preaching Iconium at the synagogue. It served as a good based to reach out to the Jews and Gentile God-fearers. Those who were waiting for God to act on his promises and were open to the truth of Jesus being the Messiah and fulfillment of those promises were quick to believe so the mission in Iconium met some early success. But that did not mean that things were all pleasant. The Jews who refused to accept the truth of the gospel were not content to simply reject it and walk away. They, like Paul once was, were determined to show their zeal for God’s ways by fighting and hopefully destroying this new upstart Messianic movement. So they stirred up the Gentiles, presumably both the God-fearing Gentiles and the pagan Gentiles, by slandering the gospel and urging them to actively oppose and persecute the Christians.

Without the fully established witness of the word of God as contained in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit confirmed their message through the means of signs and wonders. Luke doesn’t specifically recount what those were in Iconium, but they no doubt included the same sorts of things like praising God in languages that were previously unknown to the speaker and miraculous healing as they had performed in other places. These signs were not meant to impress so much as to demonstrate the values and principles of the age to come. Through the preaching of the gospel and the establishment of the kingdom of God, the elements of that future age were breaking into the present age. The manifestations of that, the signs and wonders, were confirmation that access to that age of eternal life really was available through the Messiah just as they claimed.

As Christianity will do, their message divided the city. To some it was foolishness. To others it was a stumbling block and a scandal. But to others, they saw in the gospel presentation, the power of God. The life of God’s age to come really had broken into the present age through the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah and had been made available not just to the Jews but also the Gentiles.

It appears that there was a bit of lag time between the arrival of Paul and Barnabas in Iconium and the time that the persecution against them gained traction. Luke doesn’t tell us how much time they were able to spend there but it was enough time that they were able to establish the core of a Christian community when they left. God had established a window for them of just enough time to do what they needed to do there and then get out before the persecution got too stiff. Eventually a plot somehow came to their attention that their lives were in danger and God had more work for them to do. It is important to note that the reason they left was not because their lives were in danger or because they were afraid but precisely because it was God’s plan and will that they continue on in the mission. When the time came for them to face death, they would do that without flinching, as men who believed firmly in the resurrection of those in Christ.

Upon leaving Iconium, Paul’s group would head Southwest to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe. This was no normal escape or vacation, however. They went there to continue their mission of preaching the gospel. This illustrates the importance of understanding the true nature of the gospel. If we rightly understand that the true gospel is the victory proclamation that Jesus is God’s promised Messiah who has defeated death through his resurrection and shown himself to be the true King and Lord of all people, and that the only proper response is to obey that proclamation by laying down our own lives and will, and entering into the body of believers that is God’s family, and live according to his will by putting the interests of the family of believers ahead of our own personal interests, then the path becomes clear. Wherever we go we can’t help but to declare this truth and live out the reality of the kingdom of God on earth. We realize that we are God’s people, called to live together as his family that is imperfect in this age but dedicated to the proposition of living here and now as a people that are committed to the values, principles, and realities of that future age. If this is our true mindset then we will naturally spread the gospel wherever we go.

If, however, we are confused on all of this and think of salvation as a personal issue between God and myself that does little more than change my future from an eternity in hell to one in heaven with God, then evangelism becomes a very different animal. It becomes something that I must constantly do rather than who I am. It becomes a task of which I can tire rather easily instead of a constant expression of the recognition of who we are in Christ and an ongoing expression of gratitude for calling us to be his family. It is when we really grasp that fully that we too will continue to preach the gospel wherever we go.

Devotional Thought
What is your attitude about evangelism? Is it something that you have to do or is it a natural expression of who you are? As you share your faith with those that need to hear the gospel have you embraced the fact that it will be divisive and not necessarily make you the most popular person? Why is that an important truth to grasp?

Acts 13:42-52

2011-04-25T06:41:00.000-06:00

42 As Paul and Barnabas were leaving the synagogue, the people invited them to speak further about these things on the next Sabbath. 43 When the congregation was dismissed, many of the Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas, who talked with them and urged them to continue in the grace of God.
44 On the next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. 45 When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy. They began to contradict what Paul was saying and heaped abuse on him.

46 Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. 47 For this is what the Lord has commanded us:

“‘I have made you[f] a light for the Gentiles,
that you[g] may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’[h]”

48 When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.

49 The word of the Lord spread through the whole region. 50 But the Jewish leaders incited the God-fearing women of high standing and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. 51 So they shook the dust off their feet as a warning to them and went to Iconium. 52 And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

Dig Deeper
Nearly ten years ago, a well-known Hollywood actor and producer began to formulate an idea of creating a detailed movie about the crucifixion and death of Jesus the Messiah. He took the idea to virtually every movie studio and producer in Hollywood and shopped his idea of doing the film in a gritty and fully realistic style, complete with the use of ancient languages and only English subtitles. The studios laughed him out of their offices, despite his great fame and previous movie success, and turned him down flat. Most of them called him crazy for even thinking of such an idea. But he would not be deterred so he decided to make the movie himself and fund every bit of it from his own personal fortune. Once the movie was made and was released in theaters, a worldwide phenomenon began almost instantly. The movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” was a smash hit and eventually raked in more than 600 million dollars in box office sales alone around the world. When the movie eventually came out on VHS and DVD, it sold nearly 2.5 million copies in one day.

But once that movie came out, many of the studios and movie critics were highly critical of it. The creator of the movie was criticized for making it himself and spurning the normal way to make and release movies but it seemed to smack more of pure jealousy than anything else. They had all had a turn at the movie and passed on it. They were like immature young men who broke up with a girl and then got jealous when she started dating someone else. They could have been part of the movie and helped to make it but they refused. As a result they would miss out on the massive profits and impact that the film had around the world. But it was their choice to not be part of it.

It might be safe to say that there was no human being in the first century outside of Jesus himself that wanted to see the Jews come to the eternal family of God through Jesus Christ and be part of God’s kingdom forever. Paul knew that Israel had been God’s chosen people and because of that they had certain opportunities that no other people had. So that made it all the more devastating for him to see them hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and reject it. He knew that heart all too well because he had shared in that same attitude at one time. But he had come to recognize that through the resurrection, Jesus had been shown to be the true Son of God and that only those who would lay down their lives and enter into his life through faith would enjoy the corporate status in Christ of being the children of God. That the majority of Israel was rejecting all of that pained Paul deeply. In Romans 9 he would painfully declare that “I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen” (Rom. 9:1-5).

Israel had been given the charge of being the faithful people of God and being a light to the nations but they had failed. What they had failed to do, Christ accomplished. He had faithfully done God’s will and fulfilled the role of the suffering servant culminating in his death on the Cross. He had declared himself to be the Messiah but Israel had rejected him as the holy one of God and had sentenced him to death. Yet, God vetoed that verdict and proved it monstrously unjust by raising him from the dead. Soon after, the good news was being declared by the apostles that all who would come to the Messiah in faith would be part of God’s family and receive the life of the age to come, dwelling in God’s kingdom forever. Some Jews listened and came and entered into Christ but most found the preaching of the gospel to be offensive and absurd. They would have no time for such blasphemy. But at any point, it all could have been theirs again. Everything that Israel had as the people of God could have been theirs forever in Christ but they were, much to Paul’s chagrin, rejecting that outright.

Despite this rejection by Jewish leaders and synagogues in city after city, Paul and Barnabas faithfully continued their practice of preaching first to the Jews in each city, usually in the local synagogue, and then to the Gentile. On this occasion there were many Jews and God-fearing Gentiles who continued to hear them out. Paul and Barnabas urged them to continue to be open to the grace that God had revealed in the life of the Messiah and when they showed up to preach on the next Sabbath, the place was packed with mostly Gentiles.

This apparently infuriated the Jews. Luke’s stated reason for their rage was jealousy. They had failed miserably in having such an evangelistic impact on the Gentile population and now in the span of a mere week, these men that they characterized as blasphemers and fools had done what they could only hope to do. They had drawn the Gentiles in huge numbers to their synagogue. It’s not hard to see why they were so jealous. Imagine showing up for a Sunday church gathering only to find that you can barely squeeze your way in because the place is packed to hear the very people that you have rejected as being outside of God’s truth.

Full of the Holy Spirit, Paul and Barnabas quickly responded to this petty jealousy with bold words. They made it clear to the Jews that they could have been a part of this. It was the role of Israel all along to be a light to the world. They rejected that mission and instead largely treated the pagan nations as unclean animals rather than human beings that were in the dark but needed to see the light. Jesus was that light and his gospel had been preached to them, offering them another opportunity to be part of God’s great ministry of reconciliation to the nations, but once again their own agenda superceded that of God’s. So the jealousy was really quite ridiculous. It was they who turned away. If this synagogue had been faithful to God and accepting of his Messiah then they would not be in danger of losing a large portion of their Gentile participants as well as a large number of Gentiles that had never been part of their synagogue.

The gospel had been rejected by a majority of the Jews and so would be made available to the Gentiles, not as a punishment for Israel’s rejection but as the ordained progression of the gospel (Rom. 1:16). It was made available first to the Jew, then the Gentile. This was a pattern that Paul would continue to follow throughout his ministry as he moved from town to town. While the Jews of that synagogue were filled with jealousy rather than the remorse that they should have been filled with, the Gentiles were thrilled. They understood the significance of what Paul and Barnabas were telling them. They grasped the full impact of the reality that they “were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus [they] who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:19).

The Gentiles had joined those that were appointed for eternal life. This doesn’t mean, as some might mistakenly take it, that only the Gentiles that were specifically predestined by God for salvation had responded while those that were created to reject the gospel did so. It is true that God always takes the initiative in salvation but each person is allowed the free will by God to accept or reject the gospel on their own terms. What has been appointed by God since the very beginning is that he would have a Messiah shaped family. In other words, God had always pre-determined that he would have a people for himself that would come unto him through the death and resurrection life of Jesus. When the Gentiles responded in faith, they joined the number of those that were appointed for the life of the age to come.

In the face of some success in preaching the gospel, the Jewish leaders were able to whip up support among the Gentiles that were sympathetic to them against the further spread of the message of the apostles. Many had heard the word and believed but many more had rejected. The response from Paul and Barnabas was significant. Shaking the dust off of one’s feet was the common action of a Jew upon leaving a pagan town or area. It signified that they were shaking off the sin and evil influence of those that had rejected the ways of God and returning to God’s people. It was a sign of both judgment and repudiation. Now the Christians were turning that around on those who had rejected the gospel. It was a sign that the Jews who rejected the gospel were no longer part of God’s people and would now find themselves outside of the family God while the Gentiles who had never been part of God’s family would continue in their status of alienation from the true people of God (cf. Lk. 9:5 10:11).

The constant rejection that they faced, however, did not leave them dejected. They were filled with true joy and the Holy Spirit, two states of being that go together. You simply will not have one without the other. Jesus had well prepared them for the fact that his people would face much more rejection than acceptance. The true gospel always divides, always offends, and always demands sacrifice. That is certainly a reminder for modern Christians who often seem to seek favor, acceptance, and comfort. Could it be that we are lacking the full measure of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the joy that he brings because we are unwilling to go where he is really leading?

Devotional Thought
Paul and Barnabas continued to spread the truth of the gospel whether their message was accepted and became popular or if it was widely rejected and resulted in their persecution. Do you have that same resolve to share your faith and preach the gospel to those around you or do you begin to falter when you don’t encounter immediate and continued success?

Acts 13:26-41

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26 “Brothers, children of Abraham, and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us that this message of salvation has been sent. 27 The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. 28 Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed. 29 When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. 30 But God raised him from the dead, 31 and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people.
32 “We tell you the good news: What God promised our fathers 33 he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm:
“‘You are my Son;
today I have become your Father.[b]’[c]
34 The fact that God raised him from the dead, never to decay, is stated in these words:
“‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David.’[d]

35 So it is stated elsewhere:
“‘You will not let your Holy One see decay.’[e]

36 “For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed. 37 But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay.
38 “Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. 39 Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses. 40 Take care that what the prophets have said does not happen to you:

41 “‘Look, you scoffers,
wonder and perish,
for I am going to do something in your days
that you would never believe,
even if someone told you.’[f]”

Dig Deeper
Many people seek out happiness in their life with ruthless passion. They place their own perceived need for happiness above everything else in their life and will go after it with tireless devotion. Of course there is a fundamental flaw with that mentality despite the fact that most humans spend their entire lives in the endless pursuit of this elusive happiness. The reality is that humans were really created to run on happiness we were created to run on the fuel of being God’s image bearers. It is when we realize that function in our lives that we find true joy and the elusive happiness that comes along with that. The problem that this fundamental misunderstanding causes, however, is that people often spend a good bulk of their lives seeking after happiness in the wrong things and putting their hope in the wrong places.

People will pursue money, fame, wealth, sex, food, and a countless number of other things looking to find that eternal and lasting happiness in their lives but it will never come through those things. In fact, people can become so desperate in their never-ending saga to find the pool of happiness from which to drink that they will allow themselves to be abused and mistreated. Will do horrible things to themselves with drugs and alcohol in order to find happiness. Or they will let another person come into and out of a relationship with them and abuse them because they suspect that this person might bring them the happiness that they so desire. The sad thing is that they are putting their hope in the wrong place. I’m not sure that there is anything sadder than that.

Although it may not seem like it at first glance, misplaced hope is at the heart of Paul’s message here. It all comes down to a matter of where they were placing their hope. The Jews and God-fearing Gentiles understood that God had a story that he was weaving throughout history to have a people for himself. They all desired, at one level or another, to be part of that story. But where were they placing hope to be part of God’s story and his people? Was their hope invested in the right place? That is the key question that lies just beneath the surface here.

In the first part of this particular narrative, Paul demonstrated for his audience the fact that the story he was telling was the only logical continuation of the story of God and his people. It simply had to go this way. But now he clearly states perhaps the most exciting aspect of all. God had given many specific promises in the Old Testament concerning the formation of his promised family, their freedom from the curse of sin, and the coming of the Messiah to bring all of that about. For hundreds of years God’s people had waited in eager anticipation for God’s promises to come true. In fact, Hebrews 11 is a primer course on the righteous men and women of the Old Testament times and how they remained faithful to hope of God’s promises despite difficult circumstances and seeming evidence to the contrary. All of those promises had finally arrived and the best part was that they were the ones that were part of the very early years. The incredible gift of God’s salvation had come in their lifetime!

But with great opportunity also comes great responsibility. The Messiah had come during their lifetimes and they had the incredible opportunity to accept his life and salvation but that also meant that those who refused to accept Jesus as the promised Messiah would be making the catastrophic mistake of refusing God’s salvation. The rulers and leaders of the religious groups in Jerusalem had made that mistake. Their condemnation of Christ was really their own condemnation for what it really accomplished was that they took the role of those that had been prophesied who would oppose the Messiah and cause him to suffer. Their opposition, in fact, should not shake the confidence of anyone who was drawn to putting their faith in the Messiah for it wasn’t a sign that he was not the Messiah but was a fulfillment of prophecy and a sign that he was indeed the Messiah.

At every point, Paul stresses that the Jewish leadership acted not out of genuine concern for God but in opposition to him. They had so set themselves up against God’s true purposes that they found themselves fulfilling the role of the villainous persecutors that were all part of God’s plan for his suffering servant. In that sense, they acted according to God’s plan but not according to his will. They had him killed despite having no lawful reason for doing so, they hung him ingloriously on a tree to identify him as one cursed by God, and they had him put in a tomb to rot.

That was the verdict of the religious leaders of Jerusalem but God had clearly vetoed that decision by resurrecting Jesus from the dead. God had overruled their will with his own mighty power and there were many eyewitnesses who could bare testimony to that fact. In point of fact, becoming witnesses to the truth of the resurrection is what all disciples then were called to do and what we are still called to be now. Not in the same way of course, but we still are given the task of calling people to look at the evidence of the power of the resurrected Christ in our own lives.

Like Peter did in Acts, Paul then launched into a series of Old Testament passages to show his audience that he and the other disciples were not claiming to be witnesses to something that was not of God. The sacred Scriptures had pointed to the type of Messiah that Jesus had proven to be all along.

They might not have been able to piece together the prophecies to fully understand the role of the Messiah before he came, but now they only need to look at the Scriptures concerning the Messiah. The second Psalm had declared that a specific day would come when the messiah would be shown to be the true Son of God. And passages like Psalm 16:10 had declared that God’s holy one, the Messiah, would die but his body would somehow not see decay as all people do when they die. Paul also quoted from Isaiah 55 to make the point that all of the blessings and promises of God’s people would find their fulfillment in David’s family. Yet that Psalm goes on to imply that people would not immediately grasp how the Messiah could be the fulfillment of all of God’s promises because man’s thoughts are not God’s thoughts, nor man’s ways, God’s way.

His point with all of that was sharp and clear. God had given these promises to the house of David but David could clearly not have been the fulfillment of those promises. David died like all men do. David was buried and then his body decayed like all bodies do. That would clearly disqualify him from being the one that the Psalms referred to. When you think that the answer is 3 but the question is shown to be 2 + 2, the answer clearly cannot be 3. There was only one who could claim to have died yet been resurrected by God without seeing decay. He alone was the one in whom their hope should and their faith should lay.

This isn’t all just a bunch of random and interesting facts though. Understanding who the Messiah is and accepting him as such isn’t just nice mental exercise or even an important philosophy. It is the most important thing that anyone must decide. Do they accept Jesus as God’s promised Messiah or not. Because, according to Paul and the gospel, in the resurrection lies the reality of forgiveness of sins that are available only to those in God’s family. That’s, in that sense, what it means to be justified. God’s promise was to create a family of those that would be blessed from the curse of sin and becoming part of that family is only available by having faith in Jesus and entering through baptism into his life. Following the Law of Moses could never accomplish that. The Law and any other religion or philosophy that still exists today can only conform one’s current behavior. They cannot and never could change one’s status from outside of the family God to a full member (see Eph. 2) and they can never restore and transform one back into the image of God that they were created to be (see 2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:21-24; 1 Cor. 15:49).

Because this is such an important and pivotal issue is why Paul attaches a warning. Rejecting the Messiah means completely missing the boat of what God is doing in the world. Verse 41 quotes from Habakkuk 1:5 where God warns of the dangers of missing out on what he is doing. Habakkuk goes on to say that he will stand watch and make every effort to not miss God’s work. God then promises that soon he will justify those that live by faith. This is exactly what God has delivered through his resurrected Messiah. It is in the Messiah alone that we can be justified and brought into God’s promised family. There is great danger if we put our trust in anything else. That’s a truth that must be truly believed by God’s people and proclaimed with great confidence.

Devotional Thought
How confident are you in declaring that entering into the life of Christ is the only way to be restored in the image of God and reconciled with the Father? It is not a popular message in our day but it is the truth. Isn’t it time that you declared it boldly?

Acts 13:13-25

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13 From Paphos, Paul and his companions sailed to Perga in Pamphylia, where John left them to return to Jerusalem. 14 From Perga they went on to Pisidian Antioch. On the Sabbath they entered the synagogue and sat down. 15 After the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the leaders of the synagogue sent word to them, saying, “Brothers, if you have a word of exhortation for the people, please speak.”

16 Standing up, Paul motioned with his hand and said: “Fellow Israelites and you Gentiles who worship God, listen to me! 17 The God of the people of Israel chose our ancestors; he made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt; with mighty power he led them out of that country; 18 for about forty years he endured their conduct[a] in the wilderness; 19 and he overthrew seven nations in Canaan, giving their land to his people as their inheritance. 20 All this took about 450 years.

“After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. 21 Then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. 22 After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’

23 “From this man’s descendants God has brought to Israel the Savior Jesus, as he promised. 24 Before the coming of Jesus, John preached repentance and baptism to all the people of Israel. 25 As John was completing his work, he said: ‘Who do you suppose I am? I am not the one you are looking for. But there is one coming after me whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.’

Dig Deeper
One of the interesting things about watching certain movies on DVD is all of the extra features that they add to a disc in addition to the movie itself. Occasionally you will watch a movie that has an interesting ending only to go to the extra features on the DVD and find that they have an alternate ending or several alternate endings. I remember watching one movie that had something like five or six alternate endings. It’s always a bit interesting to watch those different scenarios but sometimes the alternate endings radically change the way the movie ends or even changes the way that you look at the whole movie. There has been a few times where I have watched the alternate ending and almost felt like it ruined the experience of watching the movie for me and seeing it come to a satisfying conclusion. I always have to wonder just how important the story actually was and how tightly was it written if it can end in multiple ways.

As we have already seen throughout the book of Acts, most notably in Acts 7 with Stephen’s account, the early Christians most generally relayed the gospel to others through the vehicle of telling story. This is especially true when they were speaking to Jews but it certainly wasn’t limited to that. Stories connect with people and invite them to join in and find their own place in the narrative and how they can carry the tale forward into the future. As human beings we seem to be programmed to connect with and be moved by a good story. I know of no one that will pay $10 to sit in a darkened room as interesting facts are scrolled on a screen but we will do so readily in a movie theater if we think that we are going to see a good story. Despite the fact that the gospel is rarely preached or told as a story in our day, that was the primary way that the early church shared about Jesus the Christ.

They usually did this by telling the story of Israel and brining out certain aspects to show that God’s story was moving in a specific direction the whole time. What really made this story unique, though, was the fact that it simply could not have an alternate ending. If told correctly, the story of the Old Testament can only end properly with Jesus Christ. Without Christ it is an incomplete story and without the true gospel about Jesus Christ, the story just does not come together rightly. This is precisely what Paul was getting at in Romans 8:29 when, in the middle of explaining just who God’s people are, he says that “those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29). In other words, from the beginning of time it was God’s plan to have a Christ-shaped family. The story of God’s people could only end with Jesus as the Messiah because that is precisely where the story was heading the entire time. If you change the ending the story became meaningless. That is what the early Christians wanted people to see and understand.

Luke begins this section by slipping in the detail that John Mark left the work as they arrived in Pamphylia and returned to Jerusalem. He doesn’t give us any details on why John Mark left and so any speculation on our part is nothing more than just that. Luke has slipped in this small detail here, though, because what seems insignificant right now will become important in the end of chapter 15 when a dispute will arise over this very incident.

It seems that by this time, Paul has come to the forefront in leadership which seems to be indicated by the fact that Luke refers to the group as “Paul and his companions” rather than “Barnabas and Saul” as he has fairly regularly up to this point. The usual practice for Paul on his missionary journeys was to start his base of preaching in the synagogues and work outward from there. This time was no different as he began preaching in Pisidian Antioch (a different Antioch than the one that served as the home church for Paul and Barnabas) on the Sabbath, the easiest time to find groups of Jews and Gentile God-fearers (Gentiles that respected certain aspects of the Jewish religion and even worshiped with them but had not become circumcised and were not considered to be full members of God’s family) gathered together. Paul jumped at the opportunity to speak, although whether this chance came about through common courtesy shown to visitors or if it was that those at the synagogue had heard of Paul and his gospel and were curious to hear it, we are not told.

Stephen spent a good deal of time expounding on the story of Israel, focusing on Abraham, Joseph, and Moses to make the point that Israel’s story was always pointing to a Messiah like Jesus. It was where the story had to end. Paul is going to make the same point but focus on different aspects of God’s story. He will do that by spending a great deal of time talking about Israel’s first two kings, Saul and David, and thus emphasizing Jesus’ kingly heritage.

There was no question in Paul’s mind that the one, true God had chosen Israel to be his people. He would preach that point strongly to Jews but also to a mixed crowd of Jews and Gentile God-fearers like this one. God had called Israel and brought them out of Egypt, patiently enduring their idolatrous conduct and bringing them into the land of Canaan. Paul stresses that God had worked patiently and slowly throughout all of this, taking, in fact, 450 years to bring this all about.

God continued to show patience and work slowly to bring about his ultimate plan through the time of the judges. This was a time when Israel repeatedly drifted from God only to cry out to him and experience his merciful deliverance. Again, though, God was slowly moving the story ahead that would culminate in his Messiah.

But God’s deliverance and mercy wasn’t enough for the people of Israel. They wanted a king and so God granted them one. He gave them Saul who ruled for forty years but God removed him as one who did not embrace God’s purposes and will. He then gave them David, not a perfect or sinless man, but a man who would seek God’s will in his life and during his reign.

David was the recipient of some key promises from God that tucked neatly into the original promises that God made to Abraham. Specifically, God had promised David that he would have an offspring that would come after him that would rule forever (2 Sam. 7:12-16; 22:51; Ps. 89:27-29, 35-37; 132:11-12). If this promised one was the one that would rule forever, then it only followed that this was the Messiah that would bring salvation to the people for eternity and bring about God’s long-promised family. To follow the story of God in what he did patiently to bring about David as the mighty king of Israel and then to look at the incredible promises that God gave to David, was to realize that this story could only culminate in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Messiah. The descendant that would rule forever could not have been referring to Solomon or any other of David’s descendants. It just could not have been a reference to any normal descendant or king. It had to refer to Jesus’ eternal rule over the world from the kingdom of God. He was the only possible way for this story to move forward. Take away Jesus and there were promises made by God that he would never fulfill and that simply could not be. If God failed to come through on his promises then he was no longer God.

But God would not send the promised king without him coming properly announced. That was John’s role. Repentance was a word used in the ancient world primarily in the military setting and often denoted one who was surrendering his way of life and joining the other army to avoid being annihilated. Baptism during the Old Testament times was used as someone was leaving their people and pagan gods behind and joining the people of Israel. It was a symbolic cleansing as one came to the God of Israel and joined the Jewish people. That John was using those terms was no small detail. The repentance and baptism that he declared were also symbols that would prepare people for the coming of the King. When the King came, the eternal repentance and the true baptism into the Messiah (that is why the New Testament writers were clear that water baptism into Christ by a believer was no mere symbol) would soon be available. John was pointing people to the next chapter, the coming of the Messiah as the fulfillment of God’s story. From David to John, all of the plot points of this story were pointing ahead to the only possible ending, the Messiah Jesus Christ.

The early Christians were masterful story tellers who consistently made the story of the gospel relevant to their audience. We face that same challenge today and it is our challenge to find new and relevant ways to show our audiences today where they fit into God’s story.

Devotional Thought
Have you done the work of being able to tell the story of God in the world and his Messiah in a way that includes and connects with people today? Spend some time contemplating what that might look like and how you might be the most effective that you can be in sharing the gospel with those around you that really need to hear it.

Acts 13:1-12

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1 Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. 2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

On Cyprus
4 The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. 5 When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper.
6 They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos. There they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, 7 who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. 8 But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. 9 Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, 10 “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? 11 Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.”
Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. 12 When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.

Dig Deeper
The other day I was reading a book about biblical teaching. In that book, the author recounted a small story about an biblical teacher that he had met many years before. This influential teacher was observing with a tinge of disappointment and complaint in his voice that everywhere the apostle Paul went they started riots but everywhere he went, they served him tea. This man was wondering what the difference was and why he was politely served tea everywhere he went. The author of the book of that I was reading wondered the same thing without coming to much more of a conclusion than the idea that perhaps the content of Paul’s teaching was a bit more biting than what most biblical teachers would stomach today.

The author was on the right track. Why did they riot wherever Saul went and most biblical teachers, preachers, and Christians are treated as respectable members of their societies? The answer to that probably lies in the word “confront.” We might like to think that once the Messiah had arrived that the world quickly turned to the freeing beauty of the truth of the gospel and that the early church peacefully grew as a force of good and transformation in the world, but anyone who has spent more than ten seconds studying the Bible or early church history knows that that was not the case. The Messiah came into enemy territory to free those who were enslaved to the god of this age and the tyranny of doing their own will and living for themselves. But like an earthly kingdom, this kingdom will not go down without a bitter fight. The true gospel is unlikely to spread without confrontation with evil and the systems of the world. That’s just a reality that Paul and the early Christians understood. Saul didn’t try to make nice with the culture around him. He confronted it. He declared the subversive message of the gospel wherever he went. And make no mistake, the true gospel is deeply subversive because it challenges those in power and positions of authority. Not because it is a political movement that seeks to overthrow kingdoms but because it calls people to live by completely different values. That in itself becomes frightening and threatening to those who find the very source of their authority in the state of people living for themselves. The gospel calls people to lay down that life and those values and live an entirely different sort of life, one that gives allegiance to King Jesus and that is deeply committed to living with the best interests of others and the kingdom of God first. That will cause confrontation, guaranteed.

Wherever Saul went, confrontation was soon to follow. Saul took on the institutions that were opposed to God’s will and declared the kingship of Jesus the Messiah to a world that was not so eager to hear about it. Whether it was preaching the gospel in synagogues in each town or directly confronting pagan powers in a Gentile town, Paul knew that confrontation would be one of the primary vehicles through which the gospel was spread.

But none of this was blind confrontation. Saul and the other Christians weren’t just walking around looking for a fight. These were people that had been commissioned and gifted by God for specific roles and purposes and sent by the Holy Spirit to specific places. Luke describes Antioch as a mature church that had prophets and teachers and an entire church that was attending to the will of the Holy Spirit. They were engaged in regular worship and fasting and were humbly seeking guidance from the Lord. While they were doing that, Luke says that the Holy Spirit called for them to set apart Barnabas and Saul for a specific role. We aren’t told exactly what Luke meant by saying that the Spirit told them this, but he doesn’t give any indication that this was any sort of audible voice. More likely is that as the group was praying and fasting, the Spirit put a strong sense of resolve in the hearts of all of those present that Saul and Barnabas had been set apart for this job. It is typically through the gentle moving of the hearts of those that are deeply committed to finding God’s will that the Spirit “speaks,” and this was probably the case here. It does speak volumes about the church in Antioch, though, that they were so immediately willing to send out two of their most important leaders at the urging of the Spirit. The mission, after all, was God’s. The mission was to spread the gospel to the world, not build up the church in Antioch to ever-increasing strength and prominence. So after feeling that the Spirit had spoken to them and requested Saul and Barnabas, they prayed and fasted some more and then sent them out.

As they arrived in Salamis, they followed Saul’s usual custom of preaching first in the synagogue, before spreading out to the rest of the island. As the pair went around Cyprus preaching, they immediately found the confrontation that characterized the early preaching of the gospel. Before we consider that, however, it is important to note two small details that Luke slips into this section. The first is that John Mark had joined them in their work. That’s a detail that seems incidental here but will become important later. The other detail is that Luke tells us Saul was also called Paul. In fact, Luke uses the name Paul from here on out and so will we. Roman citizens typically had three names. Paul would have been his third name or what is called the “cognomen,” but we are never told his first two names. Saul was his Jewish name, a moniker that he would have proudly used as the name of Israel’s first king, but a name that would not have been helpful in a primarily Gentile setting (in fact some have asserted that the Latin form of “Saul” meant something like “effeminate”). Paul was adapting himself to the situations that the Holy Spirit led him into.

In Paphos, Paul and Barnabas came upon two men in particular. One was the local Jewish sorcerer and man of influence, who was known as Bar-Jesus (Jesus was a very common first-century name). Sorcery was outlawed in the Jewish religion but that didn’t stop many such men from plying their craft and influence nonetheless. The other man was the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. He had evidently already come under the influence of Bar-Jesus but was someone that Luke described as being intelligent, no doubt in part because he was willing to listen to the gospel.

Sergius Paulus wanted to hear Paul speak the word of God as he had surely heard much already of the power of the gospel, but Bar-Jesus immediately understood the threat. If Sergius Paulus were to listen to the word of God and become part of the Christian family it would destroy the influence that he had built up with the proconsul. Surely he tried to convince the proconsul that this man Paul was preaching nonsense. Perhaps he made the argument that the believers were dangerous or that they were a cult (to put it into today’s terminology). Surely Bar-Jesus said whatever he needed to say to convince Sergius Paulus that this man, Paul, was not worth listening to.

Bar-Jesus was filled with his own selfish ambition, but Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit. He understood that the gospel was not going to be spread by being nice. The gospel demands that the truth be boldly declared. There is no mincing or softening to be found in Paul’s words because he understood that Bar-Jesus was not a lost seeker but was one who had made his decision was not only an opponent of the gospel but was actively seeking to keep others from the truth. There was no room for compromise or niceties. So Paul declared him to be full of the devil, an enemy of what is right, a deceiver and one who perverted the ways of the Lord. God’s judgment had come upon him. In fact, his fierce opposition to God’s will was not even the cause of God’s judgment but a sign of it, just as in Romans 1, when Paul declares that the sin of nations is a sign that God had judged them and turned them over to their own sinful desires. The blindness that struck Bar-Jesus was simply a physical reality of the spiritual blindness that he had already been turned over to. The blindness would serve as a physical and tangible example to the proconsul and others of BarJesus’ true spiritual condition.

The proconsul immediately understood the point as well as the power of the gospel and believed. Despite all of his sorcery and claims, Bar-Jesus had never shown any power like this and his spiritual blindness had been exposed. Once again Jesus Christ had been shown to be the true King with the true power. Sergius Paulus was convinced by the combination of hearing the word of God and seeing the power of that word in action. The gospel doesn’t always require miracles like the one that took place here, but it is something designed to be put into action. When the truth of the word is combined with people seeing the word in action, it becomes a powerful evangelistic combination.

Devotional Thought
As Christians we are never called to create confrontation for confrontation’s sake but we are also called to preach the word of God wherever we find ourselves and not shrink back. How about you? Are willing to face the confrontation that truly sharing the gospel with others will inevitably bring or do you soften it up a bit so that you won’t have to deal with confrontation?

Acts 12:20-26

2011-03-25T05:15:00.000-06:00

20 He had been quarreling with the people of Tyre and Sidon; they now joined together and sought an audience with him. After securing the support of Blastus, a trusted personal servant of the king, they asked for peace, because they depended on the king’s country for their food supply.
21 On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. 22 They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” 23 Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.

24 But the word of God continued to spread and flourish.

Barnabas and Saul Sent Off
25 When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark.

Dig Deeper
There are various points throughout the Old Testament where someone would violate the holiness of God’s presence and pay dearly for it. Someone would offer an invalid sacrifice to God and immediately be struck with a terrible disease or someone else would reach out and touch the Ark of the Covenant despite God’s warnings not to do so and they would fall dead instantly. There are many such examples throughout the Scriptures of the Old Covenant and yet, there are also many other times when people would disobey God and not be struck down immediately. In fact, as we saw in Acts 5, a very similar situation happened with Ananias and Sapphira. They attempted to deceive God by lying to his people and pretending to be fully part of God’s family when they were not. After being given an opportunity to be honest and repent and failing to do so, they both fell over dead immediately. The repercussions of their behavior were as swift as they were stiff. But, we have to wonder, why them? Why did they keel over dead and not so many others? After all, there are plenty of people who have tried deceive God and be something amongst his people that they were not in their hearts. Why do some die and others don’t?

The answer to that question is not something that we can fully answer. To know the answer to that question one would have to be able to know the mind of God. What we do know, however, is that at certain places and times God allows the judgment and consequences of people’s behavior to come upon them immediately so as to serve as a warning and a cautionary tale for the rest of the people. When we violate God’s laws and word, the spiritual effects and ramifications are just as serious as those who felt their punishment immediately. It’s as if God is telling us, “This is what will happen to you ultimately if you commit these same sorts of acts and don’t repent.” The choice is then ours to learn from those situations or to not learn and be determined to face the consequences in eternity for ourselves.

This situation with King Herod seems to be one of those situations. He was certainly not the first king to begin to think of himself as so powerful that he was divine and he will not be the last, but he did suffer his punishment immediately. He had taken the mantle as king of those who purported to be God’s people and now had the nerve to oppose God’s true people and had finally shown the fullness of his true colors. He was more than willing to be worshipped and treated like a god. He was willing to take the place of the one, true, God and for that, he would be cut down immediately as an example for all.

After leaving behind the debacle of Peter escaping and the ensuing embarrassment of that situation, Herod Agrippa I made his way to Caesarea. The leaders of Tyre and Sidon joined Herod there to have an audience with him. We are not told what quarrel he was having with the people of this region but we do know that this was an area that had relied on Judea for its food supply for hundreds of years, so it was intensely in their favor to remain on the good side of Herod. Whatever the quarrel was, it is somewhat safe to assume that it was his problem with them and not the other way around. This was evidently a region where Herod felt quite comfortable and clearly had the upper hand. After such a humiliating incident with Peter’s escape, Herod would do what many people do after such an event. He went somewhere where he was in control and could dictate events.

As he arrived in Caesarea, the people of Tyre and Sidon quickly sought an audience with the King to ensure that they would continue to curry his favor and much needed support. They ensured that they first secured the support of Blastus, one of the king’s most trusted advisors. We aren’t told the nature of this support but it may have come through bribery or similar means. They wanted the king’s advisor to push for peace and not conflict because they so deeply relied on the King’s support.

The scene described in verse 21 may seem odd but it is really not outside of the normal realm of natural human behavior. They had mistakenly come to believe that their food supply and provision came from the favor of the King rather than from God and that is dangerous. Whenever we confuse the source of our provision, whether it be our jobs or a king, we are quick to give way too much power, adoration, and even worship to our perceived provider. It quickly becomes our God.

This incident with Herod in Caesarea is particularly interesting because Luke was not the only surviving account of this encounter. The Jewish historian, Josephus, also described this account. According to Josephus, “There came together for this occasion a large number of provincial officials and others of distinguished position. On the second day of the shows Agrippa put on a robe made of silver throughout, of quite wonderful weaving, and entered the theatre at break of day. Then the silver shone and glittered wonderfully as the sun’s first rays fell on it, and its resplendence inspired a sort of fear and trembling in those who gazed at it. Immediately his flatterers called out from various directions, in language which boded him no good, for they invoked him as a god: ‘Be gracious to us!’ They cried. ‘Hitherto we have reverenced you as a human being, but henceforth we confess you to be of more than mortal nature’. He did did rebuke them, nor did he repudiate their impious flattery. . . At the same time he was seized with a severe pain in his bowels, which quickly increased in intensity. . . He was hastily carried into the palace, and. . . when he had suffered continuously for five days from the pain in his belly, he died, in the fifty-fourth year of his life and the seventh year of his kingship.”

Luke stresses the fact that Herod was struck immediately with this illness and that it was a direct result of his acceptance of this blasphemy, while Josephus adds that it took him five days to actually die from this immediate illness. The problem was that Herod didn’t just fail to turn away this bit of worship, he had encouraged it and played into it. He paraded around in a shiny silver robe that reflected the sun brilliantly and further fed into the adoration of those around him. They were willing to accept that a normal man couldn’t have the power and the prestige and put this altogether like this. So they were willing recognize that Herod was a god.

Both Luke and Josephus saw the error of this. Herod should have immediately rebuffed such praise as Luke will describe Paul and Barnabas doing in Acts 14 when people take their miraculous actions as something that only the gods could pull off. Paul and Barnabas were horrified by such suggestions but Herod enjoyed it.

Luke has already been drawing a comparison between King Herod and King Jesus and now it comes to a head. Jesus was the true King and Herod was just a shadow of that. Herod was stealing what rightly belonged to the true King and he would pay for it. The contrast is stark. Jesus was the true King but was rejected by men, only to conquer death and demonstrate that he really was the true King of Israel and the world. But Herod was just a parody of the true King. He tried to curry the favor of men, and when he received their praise unjustly he accepted it falsely. And yet, the very foe that Jesus had defeated would humble Herod and show him to be nothing more than a man after all. He had fallen prey to the one enemy that no human had ever defeated, except for the true King Jesus the Messiah. Jesus was now with the Father in heaven, ruling at his right hand, while Herod would be eaten by the worms. He went the way of all things and people that set themselves up against the rightful King.

With Herod firmly in the grave, proving his mortality and weakness, the true power of Jesus would continue to be felt. When Herod died, that was the end. There was no more adoration; no more worship; and no one thought of him as the king or divine anymore. Death proved him powerless. But the word of God in the gospel would continue to flourish. More and more would come to know Jesus as the Son of God and the true King of the world. Death had proved him to be powerful beyond compare.

Devotional Thought
Who do you rely on as your provider? Is it really God or do you tend to view yourself, someone else, or even your job as your provider? It is an important question to really examine because we usually tend to worship our provider with our time, energy, and resources. Look to see who you really believe to be your provider because that is probably your God as well.

Acts 12:6-19

2011-03-18T06:52:00.000-06:00

6 The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.

8 Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.

11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.”

12 When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. 13 Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. 14 When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”

15 “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”

16 But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. 17 Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.

18 In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. 19 After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed. Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there.

Dig Deeper
I have noticed an interesting phenomenon amongst many dictators and tyrants in the world. They tend to rule by very harsh measures when need be but most of them also seem to thrive on the approval of their people. They seem to deeply need to believe that their followers love them and they will force the situation if necessary. In fact there is one dictator in Northern Africa right now who is experiencing great unrest in his country. The country is basically in full out revolt against him and has instituted a full-scale and grass-roots civil war against him. Yet, when interviewed he blindly holds to the belief that his people love him and that the violence is simply a result of terrorist groups from outside of his country. He continues to seek the favor of his people and live in the belief that they love him even though that myth is being quickly exposed to the outside world. What it reveals is that this man, like most dictators, seem to be more like spoiled children deeply in need of the approval and support of others. When they don’t get it or they are embarrassed they can lash out in very violent and dangerous ways.

Luke has already been drawing a contrast between King Herod Agrippa I and Jesus, the Messiah, the one whom his followers were claiming to be the true King of the entire world. During the Passover week the people of Jesus were preparing to celebrate the ways in which God had freed them from the slavery of sin and truly brought blessing into their lives. He did this not through violence or coercion but through the death and suffering of the Messiah himself. But Herod was a stark contrast to this. He gained and kept power through political maneuvers, violence, intrigue, and any other necessary means. Rather than celebrating God’s deliverance during Passover, Herod observed the holiday by imprisoning Peter and seeking to crush the very movement of God’s people that was designed to be the true fulfillment of the promise of Passover.

Now in Herod’s prison cell, where he had locked Peter away, the power of these two kings would come to a showdown. Who was truly in control and sovereign? Whose way of doing things would win out? Whose power would truly last? Would the prayer of the Christian community be able to overcome the power and force behind Herod’s rule? These are all valid questions that will be addressed in one strange and miraculous incident.

As we pick up in verse 6, Luke has moved ahead to the night before Herod would bring Peter to trial and have him executed, something that usually happened on the same day. Remarkably, Peter was so at peace and so comfortable with his trust in God that he was deep asleep. There seems to have been absolutely no worry on the part of Peter. Surely he reasoned that either God would rescue him somehow or that he would die like James and go to be with Christ. This was a no lose situation for him. It was as Paul would write in his letter to the Philippians, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). If Peter were rescued he would continue to boldly serve God and preach the good news but if he died, then that would be fine too because his work was done and he could finish the race with a clear conscience. So he slept soundly.

Herod was clearly taking no chances by having Peter chained to to soldiers and guarded by sentries at the entrance. Herod was making sure that there would be no great escapes, miraculous or otherwise. He was not about to lose his great prize and miss out on the chance of further cementing his popularity with his people.

Deep in the middle of the night when people just start to reach the deepest reaches of sleep, Peter was startled back to the world of the awakened by a sharp jab in the side. The angel told Peter to grab his stuff and follow him. They would not be coming back and he surely didn’t want to catch a chill in the middle of the night. Peter was so unprepared for this and so startled that it took him a few moments to fully wake up and realize that this was for real. This was no mere vision or dream. God had chosen to hear the prayers of the faithful believers who were petitioning God for Peter’s release. God had no doubt planned for Peter to be released all along but as the believers prayed humbly for God’s will to be revealed, they were allowed to be part of God’s plan. It was not yet Peter’s time to depart and be with the Lord.

At each point, it is clear that Luke is driving home the point that this angelic release was nothing short of supernatural. The chains fell off of Peter’s wrists without so much as disturbing the soldier on either side of him. They went through several guards, doors, and the outer gate without disturbing anyone, culminating in that large iron outer gate swinging open all by itself. If he hadn’t already been convinced that this was a miraculous escape, the gate swinging open by itself must have cemented that reality in Peter’s mind.

Then in the blink of an eye, the angel was gone. I’m sure Peter’s heart was racing by this point, but he needed to think clearly. First he needed to realize that this was the Lord that was at work. It was the Lord’s angel who had rescued him from Herod’s foolish clutches. Herod and his supporters wanted to put Peter to death which might have made Peter begin to question whether he was doing the right thing. Normally you might think that going to prison would make someone question the rightness of their cause all the more but his imprisonment and subsequent release had been used by God to bring even more clarity to Peter. God had opposed the desires of the Jewish people and Herod who wanted Peter dead. Peter had more work to do. Now that he realized that this was none other than the work of God, Peter continued to shake out the cobwebs and determine what must be done next.

He quickly decided that he must go to the the house of Mary, John Mark’s mother, where many Christians, perhaps Peter’s own house church, had gathered to pray for Peter’s deliverance. In the midst of these harrowing and very real events, Luke brings a bit of sly humor that has the ring much more of a true event as opposed to manufactured myth.

When Peter arrived and knocked on the door, the fulfillment of the very thing that the believers were praying for, a servant girl named Rhoda was so filled with joy that she literally left Peter out standing in the cold. We should not miss the details here that this seemingly insignificant servant girl was not only described as being overjoyed but also that she was named by Luke. Both details add up to the strong probability that she was a believer and a sister in the community. It’s further proof that this movement was a family that was open to all, whether they were rich and powerful or lowly servants. She was just as much a member of the family as anyone else.

When she ran back to tell the others, they thought she was out of her mind. There’s a humorous irony in that she went back to tell them the very thing that they were praying for, but that they didn’t believe her. It’s somehow comforting, though, to know that the early Christians could be just as full of faith and clarity at some times while struggling with doubt, confusion, or muddled thought at other time, just as we can surely be. Someone, in their confusion, threw out the idea that perhaps it was Peter’s angel. This was probably a vestige of a sometimes held Jewish belief that people had guardian angels that sometimes looked much like the person themselves. That belief was more of a Jewish superstition than it was solid theology or Luke’s endorsement of that belief (the early Christians still had things that they needed to work through and grow in their understanding just like we do), and Luke’s recording of it is another of those small details in this passage that give it the ring of truth.

After finally being let in and telling them all that had happened Luke tells us that Peter told them to inform James and the other brothers and then “left for another place.” Peter no doubt knew that he would be a wanted man in the morning and didn’t want to bring any other danger onto the other believers, as well as likely realizing that God had further work for him to do and knowing that he should get to safety so that he could carry that work on. Luke doesn’t tell us where he went and it is likely that Peter “disappeared” so well that no one knew for sure where he had gone, including Luke.

When the morning dawned, chaos ensued. No one could understand what had become of Peter. Herod furiously searched for him, no doubt finding this a major embarrassment. What was supposed to be his great moment of further endearing himself to the people and increasing his stature was about to blow up in his face. His response looked much more like a petulant child throwing a fit than a mature king leading wisely. The guards bore no fault in this situation but someone had to pay for this in Herod’s mind so he had them killed. He would certainly not open us mind to the idea that he his true opponent was God not Peter and the Christian community and that his true need was repentance and not public popularity. It also seems, according to the text, that Herod left Judea to go to Caesarea, quite possibly to escape the scrutiny and embarrassment of this situation. People do strange things when what men think of them becomes more important than what God knows of them.

Devotional Thought
What is more important to you? Is it what other people think of you or what God knows of you? Are you truly determined to live a life of honesty, confession, and integrity despite what other people might think so that you can stand blameless before God?

Acts 12:1-5

2011-03-16T09:51:00.001-06:00

1 It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. 2 He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. 3 When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. 4 After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.
5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.

Dig Deeper
I grew up watching “Rocky” movies and I always enjoyed them to be quite honest. A few years ago, a new Rocky Balboa movie was made depicting Rocky as an aging retired boxer who is lured out of retirement to fight the current champion. What entices Rocky out of retirement is a fictional computer match-up between Rocky in his prime and the current heavy weight champion. The computer simulates a fight and determines that Rocky would be the winner. The whole idea is quite popular in sporting circles actually. The question is constantly asked regarding who is the greatest team or champion of all time. If we could have a showdown between great teams of different generations who would win? Who is the greatest of all time?

The difficulty with doing such things is that it can be elusive to fairly put two champions or teams side-by-side and examine what would really happen if they ran square into one another. It’s so difficult to do that because there are so many factors that come into play that make it difficult to truly set two great times up against each other and see what would happen if they were to play.

What is so difficult with sports teams or legends, though, is quite doable when it comes to the great kings. This is exactly, in many ways, what Luke is doing throughout his gospel, and the very thing that he reminds us of here. We can look at the results of following King Jesus have in the lives of people and what it looks like when people submit their lives to his rule and reign. We can also look at what it looks like when people live under the reign of the kings of the world like Herod. And in fact, when we put them side-by-side, we see a stark contrast between these two kings.

The Herod referred to here is Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great who was King at the time of Jesus’ birth and nephew of Herod Antipas, the moody figure that ruled over parts of Israel during the time of Jesus’ ministry. After a sketchy and somewhat wild youth, Herod Agrippa settled into a kingship in Israel that was granted to him by the Roman Emperors Gaius and Claudius and one that was almost as large as the territory that his grandfather ruled over. Of course Herod’s rule was subject to the whims of Rome which meant that he must remain popular in Israel amongst the influential and powerful citizens there so that they would not complain to Rome and become a headache for the Emperor. Due to that situation, Herod spent a great deal of time and energy currying the favor of the rich and powerful, especially the Pharisees.

This meant that part of keeping his position of authority stable and strong was to keep the powerful folks around him happy and to show Rome that he would keep things stable and deal with threats to Roman rule swiftly and harshly if need be. He wanted to show the powerful in Israel that he would deal with this upcoming new Messiah movement with no sentimentality and a zeal for ridding the land of any threats to their traditional religious practices. At the same time, he wanted to show Rome that he would be a strong ruler against political threats. This is no doubt why he had James killed with a sword rather than stoning, which would have been the more typical fate.

James was the brother of John and the son of Zebedee, and was one of the three closest apostles to Jesus during his ministry along with John and Peter. He surely continued to carry a great deal of respect and influence among the early Christian community and putting him to death was a powerful statement for Herod. Putting him to death with the sword indicated a political execution. Death by stoning was more typical of a religious blasphemy committed and death on a cross was the death suffered by common rebels and criminals. Putting James to the sword then was Herod’s way of showing that he was not afraid to take out one of the leaders and major figures of this increasingly popular and powerful Christian movement. Evidently Herod found it personally helpful to send a strong message to Rome that the Christian movement was a political threat, one with which he would deal harshly while at the same time showing the Pharisees and chief priests that he would not tolerate this religious threat either. Every way you look at it, putting James to death held personal benefit for Herod Agrippa.

Luke makes it clear that Herod’s shrewd political move paid off. It brought him great favor and further cemented his power among the elite. In fact, it worked so well that Herod decided to take out an even bigger target and go after Peter who was probably the most well known and visible figure in the Christian community. Taking him out would be an even bigger coup for Herod and might permanently cripple the followers of Jesus as the Messiah, at least that was the effect that Herod thought it would have.

The fact that this took place during the Feast of Unleavened Bread was no minor detail and no small irony. This was the Feast during which the Jews celebrated the deliverance of their nation through the saving acts of their God. The Feast led into and became virtually synonymous with the Passover. And that’s where the irony comes in. During the very time when the Jews were celebrating God’s salvation from slavery, Herod was imprisoning Peter who had become one of the spokesmen of the Messiah. Herod’s plan was to keep Peter locked up until after the Passover when he could then bring him out and publicly execute him just as he had done with James the son of Zebedee.

The message of the Christians was that Jesus as the Messiah was the true king of Israel and the world and that his resurrection from the dead was clear confirmation of that. They were declaring that God had brought about through the Messiah the very thing that the Passover promised and pointed to. Israel’s true slavery was not in Egypt but in sin. They and the entire world were enslaved by sin with no hope of enacting their own freedom. But what humans could not do, the Messiah had done. He had taken the place of all humanity by going into death, the deserved fate of all mankind, but the fate that he alone did not deserve. Just when it seemed that the Messiah had suffered the fate of all humans and fallen to the undefeated foe of death, something monumental happened. In fact it was the most monumental incident in all of human history. Jesus the Messiah defeated death by resurrecting, never to die again. He had stormed into death and broke out of the other side. Death had been defeated and God had shown Jesus to be the true Messiah and the king of the world.

But this King was not trying to curry the favor of the people in order to prove himself a worthy ruler. He would not participate in the senseless death of innocent ambassadors of a gospel of peace and reconciliation. He would not exercise worldly power in order to bring about his reign. This King was exactly the opposite of worldly rulers like Herod. He was the King because he had defeated the true enemy of all people not because he got rid of those that people didn’t like. He ruled by being a servant not by lording his power over others. He called people to willing serve him which was a stark contrast to the games that Herod had to play to remain in power. The power of the Messiah brought life while the power of rulers like Herod brought death.

But Herod seemed to have all of the worldly power in this situation. James had already been killed, what could possibly stop Peter from suffering the same fate? Once again, the true King and his people work quite differently than the normal course of events. There was no violent uprising or revolt. No swords or battles. The people of the Messiah turned to the most valuable weapon they had in their arsenal. They turned to prayer.

Luke offers no explanation as to why James was allowed to die but why Peter would be spared the same fate, at least for now. Perhaps that is because there is no obvious explanation. The answer is that God is sovereign and things work in combination between human free will and God’s ultimate sovereignty. The church may not have had those answers but they did know that there was great power in prayer and it was to that that they would turn time and again. I wonder what might happen if God’s church today turned to prayer in difficult situations with the same passion, faith, and earnestness that the early Christians had.

Devotional Thought
To what do you turn when times get challenging or scary? Do you gather with other believers and turn to earnest prayer or do you leave yourself in the hands of much less powerful and effective things?

Acts 11:19-30

2011-03-09T07:24:00.000-06:00

19 Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. 20 Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. 21 The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.
22 News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. 24 He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.

25 Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

27 During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) 29 The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. 30 This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.

Dig Deeper
There is an old saying that I used to hear a lot as a kid although I don’t hear it nearly as much anymore. It is the classic line, “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” On one hand I understand the point of that saying that is trying to get across to people that we shouldn’t be worried about the labels or names that other people might assign us. On the other hand, I disagree with the mindset of that saying. Names and labels do matter and they do carry meaning and they can really hurt people. But names can also bring a great deal of pride and identity to those who carry a certain name. Family names, for instance, can be very important to people. Your surname carries with it a great deal of history and identity. It tells the world who you are, what kind of people you come from, and even what is valuable to you as a human being.

Just as individuals can be given names and labels that help others identify them or pigeonhole them, so groups can receive names. Sometimes those names are meant to honor or identify them. Other times the name is meant to ridicule the group and put its in its place. When it comes to religious groups, the name that it chooses to give itself often says a great deal about what is truly important to that group. Many religious groups today have chosen to name themselves after a man who was important in their history or even a specific aspect of their belief, which I suppose says something important about what they truly value. Some of the groups, such as the Methodists, initially received their names as an insult from other groups (in the case of the Methodists, they were given the name as mockery of the methodical ways that they received from their founder John Wesley).

The early followers of Jesus seemed to have initially and informally called themselves the Way, and they referred to each other as believers, saints, disciples, or the most common term, brothers. They saw themselves as family and the frequent use of referring to one another as brothers and sisters denotes that belief. In this passage, however, we find the term “Christian” being attached to those who followed Christ. This is no small detail or simply an interesting factoid included by Luke into his account of the spread of the gospel. It probably started out as a bit of an insult or had an intent to demean. But it is important, for in that name we learn a great deal about this early community and what they believed and practiced. The Christians, as many other groups have done in history, took a name that was meant to put them down and instead they found great distinction, identity, and pride in it.

As Luke continued to chronicle the spread of God’s family to the people of all nations, he returned to those that were scattered following the execution of Stephen. Some traveled as far as Antioch, which was the third largest city in the Roman Empire behind Rome and Alexandria, and was something of a cultural center in the Roman world as well as a social and political hub in the region of Syria. Following on the heels of the door to the kingdom of God being thrown open to the Gentiles, big things began to happen in Antioch. This wasn’t just the conversion of one small household, as important as that was. The disciples in Antioch began to see Gentiles in Antioch, many of whom were probably from all types of nations, stream into the kingdom of God. They heard the good news that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, that the family of the Most High God had been thrown open to all people everywhere.

As a result, many believed and joined the family. In fact it seems that such a commotion of good news was beginning to happen in Antioch that the church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to report what was going on, surely, but even more importantly to help in the ministry work there. There were several men described in the book of Acts that are described as being full of the Holy Spirit but Barnabas was the only man that was also described as “good.” There was a special quality to Barnabas and his commitment to the other believers that went beyond the norm. Barnabas was highly thought of in the early Christian community and was a man of great godliness. What he saw in Antioch was not some worrisome outbreak of false or compromised teaching. He saw the fulfillment of the door that was opened at Cornelius’ house. He saw God’s one family of all nations finally taking shape.

But he also realized rather quickly that they were facing a problem in Antioch. They were, in fact, facing one of those rare occasions when someone finds that they are up against what we call “a good problem to have.” God was working so powerfully in this Syrian city that the work was evidently overwhelming the brothers and sisters that were there. In response Barnabas displayed the rare ability, through the guidance of the Spirit, to be able to identify the right worker at at the right time for the right ministry.

We aren’t told why Barnabas’ thoughts turned to Saul, only that they did. This was the second time in their lives that Barnabas had paved the way for Saul in the Christian community and we don’t know why he saw so much in Saul, but he certainly was earning his nickname “son of encouragement.” The truly shocking thing is that this was probably ten years after we had last seen Saul in the book of Acts. He had apparently returned to Tarsus and spent his time sharing the gospel announcement with the people in the regions around Tarsus. He also, no doubt, spent that time poring through the Scriptures and learning how the Old Testament Scriptures pointed to a Messiah like Jesus all along. Armed with that knowledge, he was ready to spread the gospel to the Gentile world. Saul was the right man for the job. He would come to Antioch and spend the next year working side-by-side with Barnabas teaching and building up the believers in Antioch.

It was during this time in Antioch that the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians. That has come to be a term that has, for the most part, become divorced from its original meaning, but it is worth taking a look at what that term would have meant in first century Antioch because it gives us great insight into what was being taught and lived out among those early Christians.

The term “Christ” now is almost seen as though it were Jesus’ last name but it is actually the English version of the Greek “Chrestos” which means “Messiah” or “Anointed One.” The term carried with it the connotation that the Christ was a king, and in the declarations of the early believers, the true king of the world. The Christ was the one promised by God through the Old Testament Scriptures. He would be the one who would sum up in himself everything that Israel was called to be in the world but had failed to be. He would represent God’s people and take on the punishment due to sinners so that those who had no justification to call themselves part of God’s promised family could do just that. Through the resurrection, Jesus had shown himself to be the Son of God, the Messiah. In declaring Jesus to be the Christ, then, the early believers were declaring that through the resurrection Jesus had shown himself to be the true King of the world. He had thrown open God’s family and called people of all nations to lay down their own identities and lives and enter into his identity by being baptized into his life.

This was the bold declaration of the early church and it was their central message. Jesus was the true King who deserved loyalty and demanded submission. All other ways of life and holders of power were mere pretenders. There was no king except the Messiah. There was no salvation outside of him and his people. And there was no other way to live eternally than to lay down one’s life and live for the Messiah and in the best interests of others. The Greek world saw all of this as mere foolishness. How could an average man who died on a Roman cross possibly be any sort of Messiah, let alone the true King of the World? Only a fool would follow this Messiah. Only a group of “Messiahists” or “Christians” would follow such folly. It may have been an insult on the lips of those who called these people Christians for the first time but they proudly wore the name Christian.

Luke ends this section by giving us two quick snapshots of important elements of the early Christian communities. One is that the miraculous gift of prophecy that came through the laying on of the apostles hands was present in Antioch. Those who were specially gifted, men like Agabus, continued to prepare and edify the body of believers.

They also continued to live like the family that they were. When someone was in need within the family of believers it was the shared responsibility of all of them to provide for their brothers and sisters. The believers in Judea were particularly hard hit by persecution and famines and the other believers, mostly their Gentile brothers and sisters around the world would continue to provide for them. They knew that God would provide for them just as Jesus had promised in passages like Matthew 6, but that he would often do so through th ebrotherhood of the church.

Devotional Thought
If someone who had no previous knowledge of Christianity in any way were to come to this country and observe your church what might they call you? Would they call you the “isolationists”? Would they call you the “holier than thouists”? Would they call you the “bash everybody elsists”? Would they call you the “serve the poorists”? Or would they also see that above all, your church family followed the Messiah as King? Would they call you the “Messiahists”? Is that truly the central message of your family of believers? What are some of the things that churches can start to stress over just following Jesus as the true king of the world?

Acts 11:1-18

2011-03-04T07:06:00.000-06:00

1 The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3 and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
4 Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story: 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. 6 I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles and birds. 7 Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’

8 “I replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’

9 “The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ 10 This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.

11 “Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. 12 The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. 14 He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’

15 “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. 16 Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with[a] water, but you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.’ 17 So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?”

18 When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

Dig Deeper
Last year I was out of town on a ministry trip and my wife was at work at her hospital overnight. We had a friend staying with our boys and taking care of them for the night. While I was still out of town, my son called and asked if he could have our friend take him to a football game up at his high school. I told him that he could and that either our friend would pick him up after the game or I would be back in town by then and could get him. On the way home, my phone had died as I had forgotten to charge the battery but I soon got back into town and went to pick him up. I waited for quite awhile but he didn’t come out. I returned back to our house to find out from our friend that he had called and gone from the football field back to his high school building which was a bout a mile away for a post-game bonfire and dance. I was rather upset and went up to the school to find him and bring him home. When I finally found him I demanded an explanation of why he would have done such a thing. He calmly responded by telling me the narrative of events that night, including that he had tried to call me but my phone was dead. The game had gotten out earlier than he thought and everyone was leaving. He felt that either had to walk up to his school with a large group of friends and try to reach me from there or stay at the field alone. After hearing his explanation I realized that given the situation he had made the right choice and my initial objections were answered. All that was necessary was for me to hear the story and get the details.

This incident between Peter and Cornelius was no small thing and just hearing some of the details clearly made the believers in Judea, specifically in Jerusalem rather nervous. They wanted to know what exactly what went on while Peter was in Caesarea with Cornelius and the household of Gentiles. They clearly felt that Peter had some serious explaining to do. What they had heard seemed to be a massive breach of normal practices, one that would have blown a rather large hole in the worldview of the Jewish Christians concerning what it meant to be part of God’s family.

As Peter returned to Jerusalem, no doubt excited about all that had happened and that God was doing, he was immediately confronted by a concerned group of “circumcised believers.” It is doubtful that this was a formalized faction or group yet but the people that were the most concerned about this issue probably formed the nucleus of those who would continue to battle the issue of Gentiles being allowed into the family of God. By the time Paul wrote the letter of Galatians, he had a very dim view of these people as he believed that by that time they had no excuse for their continuing desire to bind the Gentiles with the law (see Gal. 2:12; 5:12). At that time they had apparently become a somewhat specific faction but the group that confronted Peter was probably little more than the roots of that group.

It is interesting, though, that their first question had to do with Peter eating with the Gentiles. It demonstrates that their concern seemed to have been more with following the Law than with truly inquiring about what God was doing through Peter with the Gentiles, but it also shows that acceptance of the Gentiles into God’s family on the part of the existing Christian community absolutely hinged on the removal of the necessity of the food laws (which explains the reason that God’s vision to Peter removed the food laws and only later did Peter make the connection that this was paving the way for Gentiles to be accepted into God’s family). You could not have full acceptance of the Gentiles into the family of God without the removal of the necessity of the food laws.

At the heart of the concern of the Jerusalem believers was whether or not Peter had accepted these Gentile pagans in the family of the Messiah without making sure that they had become full family members by following the Law and being circumcised, the very things that in their mind were necessary for family status. There may have been a mixture of concern about zeal for God’s Law as well as fear that they would receive harsh criticism and even further persecution from the Jews if it was thought that they were indiscriminately fellowshipping with Gentiles. To do so would have rendered the new Christian community to the status of complete pagans and blasphemers in the eyes of the Jews rather than just an inerrant sect of Judaism. Peter’s response was to simply tell them the story and explain to them everything that had happened.

Luke again takes the time, for the third time now, to recount Peter’s story as he was given a vision concerning the food laws, Cornelius, and the Gentiles. Peter initially protested at the thought of doing anything that violated the Law but it was the divine voice that ordered him to do so. Up until that point, he had been blameless in his observation of the food laws. It took three times, a number that signified completeness to the Jewish people, to fully make clear to Peter that this was God’s will. Immediately on the heels of the heavenly vision, the men from Caesarea came, demonstrating in Peter’s mind that their visit was directly connected to his vision. The Spirit told Peter to have no hesitation about entering into the house of this Gentile, and peter now mentions that he brought six brothers with him as witnesses to all that happened. Peter found Cornelius eagerly waiting for him and mentions for the first time the angel had specifically told Cornelius that the message that Peter brought would bring salvation, or in other words, would finally bring them into God’s family.

Peter then recounted to the brothers how the Holy Spirit came upon them just as he had come upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost. It is significant that Peter did not relate the coming on of the Spirit here with the baptism salvation event later in Acts 2. The reason is simple. The pouring out of the Spirit in the upper room on Pentecost was an event that signified that the door to the kingdom was truly swinging wide open and that people could be baptized into Christ and enter into God’s kingdom. It was not a salvation event. The Spirit coming upon Cornelius and the others was a completion of that once-for-all baptism of the Spirit. The Spirit had been made available and salvation had come first to the Jew then to the Gentile (Rom. 1:16; 2:10). The baptism with the Spirit was not some separate event that continues today to be an experience for certain believers who attain a higher spiritual plane than others, but it was door that opened up and poured out on the Jews (Acts 2), then the Samaritans (Acts 8), and finally the Gentiles (Acts 10-11) that made baptism into Christ available for all time and once that door had been opened it cannot be closed.

So what was Peter to do? He asked them quite clearly, “if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way.” Who was Peter to reject what God had accepted? The Gentiles had been given the same gift that had been given to the Jews. They had every bit as much right, just as they were, to enter into God’s family based on their baptism into Christ alone. That was definitive. They were members of God’s family without having to first become Jews. The baptism of the Holy Spirit had come and opened God’s family for all time to all people of all nations.

So Peter had given the best defense for and explanation of his activities that he could possibly imagine in the form of a rather straightforward narrative of events. At every turn, this was not an expression of Peter’s will or explanations but it was the expression of God’s will. The only choice that Peter had was to accept what God was doing and that would seem to have been the only choice that the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem had. Their initial reaction was to accept Peter’s words and to praise God that he was so gracious so as to even give the repentance that leads to life to the Gentiles.

But as we well know, human nature is not always that simple either. This issue would pop its head up again and again during the first generation of the church. It is one thing to hear that God has opened his family up to all people and rejoice over that. But the hard work of putting it into practice, dealing with it, and forging unity when dearly cherished practices and beliefs run headlong into differing beliefs and practices of those that were also in God’s family is an entirely different thing. It’s easy to say that the family of believers is your true family but the hard work of actually embracing that through the difficult times and living it out is a much more difficult and ongoing task.

Devotional Thought
Do you truly embrace your church family and the family of believers as your family or do they still fulfill a rather secondary role in your life? What would it look like to truly embrace the family of believers as your primary family of identity and loyalty as the Scriptures call for?

Acts 10:36-48

2011-02-28T07:43:00.000-06:00

36 You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. 37 You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

39 “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, 40 but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. 41 He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. 43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. 45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. 46 For they heard them speaking in tongues[b] and praising God.

Then Peter said, 47 “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” 48 So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.

Dig Deeper
A few years back the church at which I now minister had a member of the church family who happened to be a player for the local professional NFL team in our area. That was before we moved here but many of the people who are still in our church family here knew him and his wife (he was injured and eventually retired from professional football before moving back home). I thought about that recently, though, when my youngest son asked me about going up to the stadium and maybe catching a game. He said that he would like to watch the game and then go into the locker room and meet the players. That’s a great idea, but of course I had to explain to him that we didn’t have tickets and couldn’t afford to buy any. Then he thought that perhaps we could just go up to the stadium and go into the locker room without getting tickets for the game and going to that. What he didn’t realize is that there is no way that we could ever get into that locker room. We could try and plead and beg and do everything else that came to mind but they would not let us anywhere near the locker room. We are not members of the team and you don’t get in unless you are a member.

But the brother that I mentioned was a member of the Green Bay Packers. He could go into the locker room whenever he felt like it because he belonged to the team. Of course no one else in the church at the time was a member of the Packers and so they could not go in even if they wanted to. But from time to time, this player would take a couple of disciples from the church with him into the locker room. They could go where they normally would not have been allowed simply because he told the security guards that they were with him. Because he belonged, he had the right to bring them in with him and his endorsement signified to the security people that it was okay for them to enter. Any of the normal objections would be voided by the fact that he had vouched for them.

Now that’s not a perfect analogy, analogies never are perfect, but it does start to help us understand some of the confusing aspects of this scene here. We can easily recall passages like Acts 2:38 where it is promised that all who enter into the life of Christ through repentance and baptism will receive the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But here, at first glance at least, it looks as though the Spirit is being given before baptism. That can be confusing for some folks. But first we must remember that there is an important difference between the Spirit of sonship that we receive at baptism, that subtle indwelling that guides us through the process of growing into Christ’s family and being transformed into the image of Christ, and the outpouring of the Spirit that enabled people to display the miraculous gifts of the Spirit as a verifier of the truth of their message. It is the difference between the “gift” of the Spirit and the” gifts” of the Spirit.

The reality is that what is going here is not at all confusing when we look at it from the perspective of the above analogy. The Gentiles could not previously enter into God’s family but they would be allowed now. And just so that there was no confusion and no arguments, one who belonged to the family, the Spirit of God himself, would vouch for them. The Holy Spirit would give them his special outpouring, something that for the early church usually only came through the laying on of hands by the apostles. But this was not a normative event. This was a once-and-for-all opening of the door to the Gentiles that was similar in its magnitude to the outpouring of the Spirit that came upon the apostles in Acts 2 at Pentecost. He poured himself out on them, enabling them to perform signs and speak in tongues to show that the door to God’s family really was opening and that people really could be baptized into God’s family. He was pouring himself out on these Gentiles now to vouch for them and show the Jewish Christians that God’s family door was opening to them as well. If the Spirit had vouched for them then they all they could really do was to endorse the Spirit’s call and baptize these folks into God’s family.

Throughout Peter’s speech to the household and friends of Cornelius he continues to stress that everything that has happened and everything that he was claiming about Jesus Christ was a result of God. Cornelius was not a Jew but he was a God-fearer. He was one who had been staring in through the shop window for a long time and had liked what he had seen about Judaism but he could not realistically become a member of God’s family. So Peter makes it clear to him that this was the same God. Everything that Cornelius admired and desired about this God had come to fulfillment through Jesus Christ, and what was more was that he no longer had to stand on the outside and look in admiringly. He and all other Gentiles could finally come in.

At every turn in this section, Peter brings out that the promised salvation that would make people of all nations God’s people had come through the agency of Jesus Christ but it was orchestrated through the hand of God. It becomes clear that when Peter referred to God, he was primarily referring to the Father whose role is to appoint and ordain the actions of the Son and the Spirit. God sent Jesus Christ to announce peace to the people of Israel. He, through the power of the Holy Spirit, went around showing people that he truly was the Messiah, but he was able to do all that because God was with him. He was put to death on a cross, but God raised him from the dead. This was not an event that was witnessed by all people but was witnessed by those whom God chose to serve as witnesses to his resurrection to the rest of the world. They were the ones that were appointed to preach that God had appointed Jesus Christ as the judge of the living and the dead.

Finally, said Peter, all of the prophets testified about Jesus, declaring that everyone who believes in him would receive forgiveness of sins through his name and life. The person who insists on finding a specific prophecy or passage that makes this exact statement will have some trouble. Peter was not claiming any such thing. He was not claiming that there was a specific passage in the Old Testament that made this prophecy. His point was that the whole of the Old Testament promises that came through all the prophets pointed to this exact concept. God’s people would always be built on faith and the specific expression of that faith would come through dying to self and having resurrection faith in the life of Jesus Christ (see Romans 4 where Paul expounds upon this exact idea).

It appears that verse 43 was not the end of what Peter was planning to say because he was interrupted by the Holy Spirit. We can speculate that perhaps Peter was ramping up to give a similar call to Acts 2:38 where he called his listeners to repent and be baptized in Christ for the forgiveness of sin and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But God knew how challenging this was going to be for the Jewish Christians and the watching Jewish world. Many would have a hard time accepting the entrance of Gentiles into the family of God based solely on being baptized into Christ and reception of the subtle but powerful gift of the indwelling Spirit. They were so conditioned to think of things like circumcision and following the Law as one’s uniform of the people of God. It would have been easy for them to continue to question the validity of the Gentile believers and to eventually splinter God’s people into two groups of Christians. But this would have gone against the very point of God creating his one people out of the two (Eph. 2:11-22).

In fact, this was such a challenging concept that the Spirit considerately stepped in and gave a clear sign that God was accepting the Gentiles just as they were based on nothing more than their belief and baptism into the life of Christ. What God was calling clean, no man should call unclean. That this was a monumentally difficult acceptance for Jewish Christians is evidenced by much of the rest of the New Testament. Books such as Ephesians, Galatians, and Romans have the difficulty of fully accepting Gentiles into God’s family despite not being circumcised or following the Law as a primary theme. And that is after the Holy Spirit broke in upon the Gentiles and poured out the miraculous gifts upon them.

Some have wondered, though, if the Spirit coming upon them meant that the Gentiles were already saved without really needing to be baptized into Christ through water baptism. In some ways this speaks more to our Western need to break everything down into its smallest parts to understand it, and usually winds up in us separating things out that don’t need to separated from one another. But this passage has led to so much confusion for some that it is probably a legitimate question to consider. The key, as mentioned above, is to understand the difference between the outpouring of the Spirit and the indwelling. Even in Old Testament times, the Spirit would occasionally come upon one person or a small group of people in a special act and enable them to partake (including someone like King Saul who was certainly not a man after God’s own heart but could be used occasionally for God’s purposes), however temporarily, in specific work of God. This practice would continue for a brief time after the coming of Christ. But this is separate to the gift of the indwelling Spirit that was received only when one entered into Christ and received a new heart through the work of God’s own Spirit (Ezek. 36:26). What the Gentiles received, then, in the outpouring of the Spirit and the ability to demonstrate the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, was not entrance into the family of God. It was a voucher from the Holy Spirit. It was a one-time, non-normative event that was showing God’s people that this group of non-Jews really did belong into God’s family. The only thing that one needs to enter into the life of Christ through baptism is faith in his life; nothing more and nothing less.

Devotional Thought
Chances are pretty good that you are a Gentile. Have you really ever spent some time thinking deeply about the great lengths that God went through to bring you into his family. Not just as a Gentile but even as an individual. Spend some time today praying through your own salvation story and how God brought you into his family. Express your deep gratitude for how much he has done to bring you into his family.

Acts 10:17-35 Commentary

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17 While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was and stopped at the gate. 18 They called out, asking if Simon who was known as Peter was staying there.
19 While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Simon, three[a] men are looking for you. 20 So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them.”
21 Peter went down and said to the men, “I’m the one you’re looking for. Why have you come?”
22 The men replied, “We have come from Cornelius the centurion. He is a righteous and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to ask you to come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.” 23 Then Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests.
The next day Peter started out with them, and some of the believers from Joppa went along. 24 The following day he arrived in Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. 25 As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. 26 But Peter made him get up. “Stand up,” he said, “I am only a man myself.”
27 While talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. 28 He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. 29 So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?”
30 Cornelius answered: “Three days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me 31 and said, ‘Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor. 32 Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He is a guest in the home of Simon the tanner, who lives by the sea.’ 33 So I sent for you immediately, and it was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.”
34 Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism 35 but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.

Dig Deeper
Not all that many years ago a young woman that I know was born into a family many miles away from where I was born. She was, it goes without saying I guess, born into a different family than mine. Once that happened that was it. Once you’re born into family, of course, you cannot go back and be born into another family. And so there it was. She and I were part of a different family and would remain that way all while growing up. We never met while growing up, but we finally did meet almost 17 years ago now. It didn’t take too long for that beautiful young lady and I to decide that we wanted to get married and be together for the remainder of our lives. We did so and we got married and something rather interesting happened during that wedding. Based on nothing more than being married to me, my wife became a member of the Burns family. She had not been born into but she was now as much a Burns as I was. Yet, in many ways she was very different than any of the other Burns family members. She is not related by blood to any of the Burns’ and she couldn’t really change that. All of the Burns ancestors are white and my wife is black but she could not change that. She doesn’t have the same sort of characteristics and attitude that seem to be something of a hallmark of Burns women and she did not need to change that. She is a member of the family.

My wife was accepted into the family despite all of that because she was my wife and for that reason alone. Can you imagine, though, if my family had reluctantly accepted that she had become my wife but did not really accept her as part of the family? Oh, she could marry me, and that was all fine and good, but what if they still didn’t view her as part of the family? What if they began to tell her that it was nice that she had married me but to truly be part of the Burns family there were a few things that would have to be taken care of? First, she would need to go through a series of treatments to whiten her skin because Burns women have lighter skin than her and that’s just how things are. Then, they told her that she would need to change certain things about her character and personality to fit into the model of Burns women. She would have to cook like a Burns woman, keep house like a Burns woman, and follow many of the patterns and typical behaviors that Burns women had always done. Only then, could she really be part of the family. Not only would that be discouraging and unrealistic in many ways, it would certainly make her feel inferior. It would also indicate that marrying me did not accomplish all that much as far as making her a Burns. In fact, it meant virtually nothing as far as that was concerned.

For hundreds of years the family of God belonged to the descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people. The family had been promised to descendants of Abraham and they believed that membership into this family was quite literally their birthright. Sure, there were promises to Abraham and through subsequent promises that the whole world would be blessed through this family, but they assumed that that would all somehow happen when God had exalted the nation of Israel, dealt with and judged the pagan nations, and cleared the world of evil and oppression. Only then, in the age to come, would God somehow bring about blessing to the Gentiles. And there were a handful of Jewish converts over the centuries who became Jews but in order to join the family of God, they had to literally become Jews. They had to get circumcised and follow all of the Law of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was only in circumcision, following the food restrictions, and the other laws that people would show themselves to be part of God’s family. There just was no other way that the people of Israel could conceive of being part of God’s people.

This whole issue can be difficult for us, two thousand years later, to connect with and understand but the analogy above (although it’s not a perfect analogy) starts to give us a bit of insight. It seems outrageous for us to see how the followers of Jesus could not grasp that Gentiles could not be saved but that really wasn’t the issue. They knew that God had not promised individual salvation the way we tend to view things nowadays. God had promised a family and had promised that blessing, forgiveness of sin, and salvation would come to those in that family. Jews believed that they would always be that family and failed to understand Old Testament passages that hinted at the fact that they would one day not automatically be so but that it would be passed on to others. They grew furious when Jesus asserted that he was the fulfillment of that promised family and that only those who came to him would be part of it rather than physical descendants of Abraham (see John 8:31-41). So when Jesus told his disciples that Gentiles would come streaming into God’s family as well, they naturally assumed that God’s family was synonymous with being Jewish, with being circumcised and holding to the Law. So they assumed that to be part of God’s family one must do all of those things.

The problem with that, as Paul argues so ably in Romans is that “For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless. . . Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: ‘I have made you a father of many nations’” (Rom. 4:14-17). In other words, if one is shown to be in the family of God by following the law, then there is no point in faith. It must be faith in the life of Christ alone that places someone in God’s family or it is nothing at all.

This is the issue at hand that Peter and the other disciples had failed to grasp. This is what God would show Peter as he made his way to the house of Cornelius. This was a big moment in the history of God’s people which is why Luke gives so much attention to it and why the circumstances surrounding it were so non-normative. This was nearly as big a moment as the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost (and in actuality was something of a completion of that event) because this was the time when God’s people finally began to fully grasp what God was doing and that this truly would be one family of all nations, all peoples, all language, and all tribes.

When Peter arrived at Cornelius’ house it became quickly apparent that Cornelius had not known exactly what would happen but he must have sensed that God was going to do something big as he had invited a large number of his family and friends. He was so excited that we can easily understand his slight breech in getting carried away and going overboard by dropping to the feet of Peter in reverence. Peter quickly corrected him, reminding him that in God’s kingdom, there was no hierarchy, just a brotherhood of believers.

As Peter began to address the large gathering of Gentiles at Cornelius’ house, he put the primary issue on the table, so to speak. Normally it would be against common practice for a Jew (and up to that point, a Jewish Christian) to eat with or associate with those outside of God’s family, the Gentiles. But God had shown Peter in his vision that the time for the food laws and dietary restrictions were over and he quickly realized that this meant that God would not be excluding Gentiles from his people any longer. It wasn’t that the law was bad, but the Messiah had come and the law was no longer necessary (Gal. 3:19) as it separated Jews and Gentiles in its very purpose. Now God had made the two into one and destroyed the barrier between the two (Eph. 2:14-15). Just as you might tell a child at a busy street to stop and not walk, but then tell them to go quickly once the crossing light comes on because the situation has changed, so the time to follow the Law as a necessary aspect of being God’s family had passed. The Messiah had come and that was all anyone needed to join into his family.

Thus, Cornelius recounts his encounter with the angel to Peter. The reasons for Cornelius’ re-telling of his encounter and eagerness to hear what God has to say through Peter are obvious, but the only reason that Luke would basically repeat the very details that he has already given is to stress to his readers the importance of what was going on.

Peter had already stressed that his coming into their home was in and of itself a sign that something big had happened to change his worldview and he quickly began his address to his riveted audience by getting to the heart of the matter. God had promised to Abraham that one day God would create one family of all nations and that time had truly come. There would be no special hoops to jump through to be part of God’s family. It was not required that one be physically born into this family or become like those that viewed themselves as already part of it in order to fit. Entrance into this family was based on faith in the life of Christ alone and nothing else. One could not be born into it but one could be born again into this family through Christ (Jn. 3:5) Peter had finally come to realize that “God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.” This message is as true today as it was when Peter first uttered those words nearly two thousand years ago.

Devotional Thought
In Galatains 2:20, Paul described the moment that he died to his own life and will as being crucified so that he no longer lived for himself but for Christ alone. Have you ever had a clear moment like that in your life when you died to self and was baptized into the life of Christ alone? If you have, have you truly been living a crucified life?

Acts 10:1-16

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1 At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. 2 He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. 3 One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!”
4 Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked.

The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. 5 Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. 6 He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.”

7 When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. 8 He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa.

Peter’s Vision
9 About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11 He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. 13 Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
14 “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

15 The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

16 This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.

Dig Deeper
I seem to get a lot of questions wherever I go about what my plans for the future are. People are constantly interested in whether we plan to stay in the ministry where we are at or if we would hope to move somewhere else one day. Or they want to know what is in store as far as the teaching ministry goes. Usually I tell them that it is all up to God. I say that because it is true. We don’t have any plans to go anywhere and I pray constantly that the teaching ministry will go exactly where God wants to take it. At the same time, we are always open to God’s call upon our life. Every now and then, though, someone will ask me quite specifically if I would ever be open to moving to one place or another to serve in the ministry in that place or even to plant one where there is a gap. Sometimes the places that people mention are actually quite attractive and I just tell them that if we ever felt God calling, we would be happy to go (usually those places involve somewhere with rather consistently warm weather, at least those are the places that sound most attractive to my wife and oldest son). On occasion, though, someone will bring up a place that I just don’t want to go and ask me if I might ever consider going there, like my hometown for instance. In those cases, I usually joke that I would be more than happy to go once the actual hand of God appeared and wrote specific instructions on the wall for us to go. Anything short of that, I jest, and I would not go. I usually say this jokingly, but the point is real. There are some things that are so challenging to our way of thinking that it would take something out-of-the-norm, something monumental, in order for us to be willing to do it.

Throughout his ministry Jesus had hinted that the time was coming when the physical Israel would no longer automatically be the children of God, God’s people. Jesus had said that a time was soon coming when the people of Israel would say “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” But, Jesus responded that he would reply, “I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!” Jesus went on to promise that there would “be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last” (Lk. 13:26-29). This was nothing new. After all, the prophets had declared that God’s intention was to bring all nations into the kingdom of God (see Isa. 56:1-7 for instance).

This was no easy concept, however. It wasn’t something that Jews, even Jewish Christians could easily understand or accept (in fact it would take them the first entire generation of Christianity to start to sort it all out), even though Jesus had clearly told them that their mission was to involve going to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). If one held so tightly to a certain definition and understanding of what it meant to be part of God’s people, it would be easy to miss what God was going to do with the Gentiles. After all, the Jews had kept themselves apart from the nations for hundreds of years, at God’s behest, by not intermingling with Gentiles. They circumcised themselves to demonstrate their covenant with God and to show themselves separate from the pagans. They kept the food and dietary laws as a powerful separator between the people of God and all of the other nations. Jews had been persecuted and killed upholding these laws and the honor of God’s people. Changing that mindset would not come easily. Perhaps Jesus had called them to include all people but weren’t these markers like circumcision and the food laws the very things that God had given his people to show them and the world that they were his people? Surely, if anyone wanted to join the Messiah’s family they would have to realize that it was still the family of God. They would still need to follow all of the laws and standards of being part of God’s people in order to number themselves among God’s family that was being formed in the Messiah.

It would take something big and something rather clear to help the apostles, and the entire Christian community, to accept the Gentiles fully into the family of God. If for no other reason, that is exactly why Luke will spend so much time on these dual visions of Cornelius and Peter. This was big. It was the final door that needed to be opened as God’s family became open once-and-forever to people of all nations. This would be difficult for the Jewish Christians to accept, but it would be equally big and encouraging news for Luke’s presumed audience of Theophilus and the other Romans around him.

Cornelius wasn’t just a Gentile. He was a Roman. He wasn’t just a Roman, he was a Roman soldier. He wasn’t just a Roman soldier, he was a centurion that was in charge of a hundred men. He didn’t live in just any city. He lived in Caesarea, a city that the Jews hated and called “the daughter of Edom”; it was a city within Israel but it served as the administration center for Rome in Palestine and boasted more Gentiles than Jews. There was much that was going against Cornelius in the minds of Jews and Jewish Christians alike. But there was also some things that would make him favorable in the eyes of those groups. He was a God-fearer, meaning he greatly respected much about the Jewish religion and observed certain aspects of it, but had not become a full proselyte or been circumcised and would still have been considered an unclean Gentile by most Jews and certainly not part of God’s family. But Cornelius was still a devout man who observed regular Jewish prayer and the consistent giving of alms.

During the regular Jewish afternoon prayer time Cornelius was visited by a divine messenger. Cornelius had been noticed by God as an authentic believer and had been chosen for a great task. The thrust of the message was that Cornelius should find Peter and bring him to Caesarea. What would happen once Peter got there would be directly from God. Of that Cornelius need not worry.

The next day we are told that Peter went up to the roof to pray, at the same time as trusted servants of Cornelius and a fellow devout soldier went to Joppa to find Peter. As Peter was praying, he had a vision. This vision was particularly appropriate because he was hungry and his vision involved food. In his heavenly vision, Peter saw something like a large sheet open up that contained all kinds of animals, both clean and unclean. The voice in the vision told Peter to eat but Peter was immediately horrified. As a devout member of the people of God he would never agree to eat such things. This would be unthinkable in Peter’s mind because in the very act of eating such things, he would be showing that he was not a member of God’s people. Following the Law, including the dietary restrictions was the uniform of the Jewish people that showed the pagan world that they were indeed God’s people. It was, in other words, the sign of their justification, a term that referred, at least in part, to being part of God’s people.

Peter did what Peter seemingly tended to do and blurted out the first thing that came to mind, for better or worse. He would not eat unclean food, divine voice or no divine voice, in a protest that bore similarities to Ezekiel’s in Ezekiel 4:14. How could God be commanding him to eat such things? Just to make it clear, the voice rebuked Peter for his objection and urged him not to call anything impure that God has made clean. The obvious implication was not that these things were always clean but that God had now made them clean.

The great issue of this vision that has been disagreed upon by Christians down through the centuries is whether the vision referred to the declaration that all foods were now clean for eating or whether the vision was allegorical and was referring to the coming inclusion of the Gentile people in the kingdom of God. The arguments generally seem to focus on the belief that it must refer to one or the other. It is true that Peter had heard Jesus basically declare all foods clean (Mk. 7:14-19) but it was perhaps not until this vision that he truly grasped the shocking point that Jesus had made (it is quite possible that this vision helped Peter come to the clear conclusion that Mark declared in Mk. 7:19). But there was an inextricable link between the dietary restrictions and the barrier between Jews and Gentiles (see Lev. 20:24-26). The food restrictions were designed to teach God’s people of the deep dangers of taking sin into their lives and binding themselves with sin. They would continue to learn that important lesson by remaining separate from the pagans and the food restrictions were one of the primary means of doing that.

Now that Christ had come, the Law, including the dietary restrictions were no longer necessary. The lesson had been taught and God’s family was now open to people of all nations, just as God had promised all along. In being told to accept all foods as permissible, Peter would inevitably realize that he was also being prepared to accept all human beings. One was connected with the other as Peter will soon learn. God had promised Abraham that he would one day have a family of all nations and one thing is for sure, God always keeps his promises.

Devotional Thought
The vision that Peter received was certainly jarring news for him but Peter was constantly seeking God’s will for the life of the believers so when he received it he was immediately willing to change lifelong practices. Are you equally in constant search of God’s will and open to new ground and new adventures? What might God be calling you to do today?

Acts 9:32-43

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32 As Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the Lord’s people who lived in Lydda. 33 There he found a man named Aeneas, who was paralyzed and had been bedridden for eight years. 34 “Aeneas,” Peter said to him, “Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and roll up your mat.” Immediately Aeneas got up. 35 All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord.
36 In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas); she was always doing good and helping the poor. 37 About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. 38 Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, “Please come at once!”

39 Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.

40 Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, “Tabitha, get up.” She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up. 41 He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called for the believers, especially the widows, and presented her to them alive. 42 This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord. 43 Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon.

Dig Deeper
One of my favorite all-time television shows is the Andy Griffith show. Even though that show came on the air and was gone before I was even born I have always loved it. I have watched it ever since I can remember and, in fact, it happens to be on the television as I write this right now. I dare say that I have seen every single episode of that show that was ever made. One of the most memorable episodes for me when was when Sheriff Andy Taylor, the main character, was asked to be the sole judge of the town’s beauty contest at their founder’s day celebration. The week before the contest was full of young ladies trying to woo the sheriff and impress him with their considerable talents and attributes. They all desperately tried to demonstrate for the sheriff just how important they were and how foolish it would be to not pick them. To make matters worse, the parents and those close to the different young ladies try to use their influence to convince the sheriff to choose their loved one during the contest. The sheriff was almost overwhelmed by all of this but managed to get through the week and get everything prepared for the big day thanks to the tireless efforts of a very kind and quiet older woman, Ms. Bishop, who took care of almost everything for the event. On the day of the celebration the sheriff didn’t know what to do. He was simply torn as to who he should vote for. As the moment came where he had to crown “Miss Mayberry,” he had a brilliant thought. Everyone was so worried about the “important” girls in town that they failed to even notice this quiet but infinitely helpful servant, Ms. Bishop. So, even though she wasn’t an official contestant, Andy named Ms. Bishop the winner of the contest for being the one who displayed true beauty and grace all week.

It is easy to pay attention to the flashy and important folks around us, even within our church families and not notice the Ms. Bishops very often. They are the quiet humble workers that maybe don’t have the gifts that put them up front in the eyes of others but they are the real heart and soul of the church. They are the ones that make it go, but they very rarely get any credit, not that they would usually want any, and they certainly don’t get noticed much. It’s a good thing for us that Luke wasn’t as unaware of those invaluable people as we often can be. Without his careful preservation of people like those mentioned in this section, we would never know about people like Tabitha and Aeneas. Although Luke is giving the large sweep of the most important events in the development of God’s people, he takes the time to record some of the regular folks who were truly the lifeblood of that family.

We aren’t told exactly why Peter was traveling around the country and visiting the Lord’s people, but it was presumably to encourage and build up the communities there. These communities had likely been formed as Christians that fled the persecution in Jerusalem spread throughout the area (Acts 8:1, 4). Although it is also true that Philip had passed through this area as he preached to gospel as he was going from Azotus to Caesarea (Acts 8:40). Lydda was about twenty-five miles northwest of Jerusalem and Joppa was thirty-five miles northwest of Jerusalem.

As he traveled, Peter met with the Lord’s people in Lydda. The word rendered “Lord’s people” in the NIV is literally “saints.” The meaning of “saints” were those who were set apart for God. Thus, the translation “Lord’s people” is quite appropriate. It is important to note that this word “saints” is always used in the New Testament for a group rather than individual people. Saints are not specific people who have attained some higher spiritual standing than most. It is a collective term that refers to God’s people as a whole. Christians are not saints in and of ourselves, we are all part of the saints, the special collection of God’s family.

While in Lydda, Peter came across a man named Aeneas who had been bedridden for eight years (although the Greek could also be taken to say that he was bedridden since he was eight). Luke never explicitly tells us whether Aeneas was himself a Christian or not at the time of his encounter with Peter, but the specific use of his name probably indicates that he either was one at the time or became one after this incident. As Peter encountered this man he made it clear that it was Jesus Christ who was supplying the healing power, not Peter. Aeneas had just experienced the verifying power of the Holy Spirit as he confirmed that this group of the Lord’s people really were just that. People need not see them as a group of blasphemers or God rejecters. They really were God’s people. As a result, then of his healing, more people to come to the truth of the gospel.

As Peter moved on to Joppa he quickly joined up with the family of disciples there as they were caring for a disciple named Tabitha. Tabitha was not someone that we would normally hear about. She apparently did nothing spectacular or specifically important as far as spreading the gospel goes. She seemingly held no big title and had no defined leadership role within the Christian community. Yet, as Luke makes clear, she was just as important as any other disciple, evangelist, or apostle, for in Christ there are no distinctions (see Gal. 3:26-29) that make one person any more valuable than another. Tabitha was extremely important, though, because she was a disciple of Jesus Christ. She lived what she claimed to believe. She was always, Luke tells us, doing good and helping the poor. She was one of those people that is easy to not notice but she was dearly loved because she understood that being a Christian meant a life of devotion and service to God’s people and to those who were on the bottom of society.

During Peter’s stay with the disciples, Tabitha herself became ill and died. The family of believers immediately took on the role of family within that culture by caring for her body because they knew that she was their true family. This is in stark contrast to most Christians today who might think fondly of other Christians and even spend a fair amount of time with them, but would hardly consider them as their true family in the areas of being their true identity, the true source and object of their loyalty and affection, and the ones who they would consider more important than their blood families. It was the disciples who would care for Tabitha’s body and bury her if necessary. But they seemed to have something else in mind. Rather than immediately burying her, they sent for Peter.

Tabitha’s constant labor and service within the family of believers had won her many friends. This was exactly what Jesus had urged his people to do with their worldly resources (see Lk. 16:9 where Jesus urged his people to use their resources to gain friends rather than just on themselves). Rather than hoarding our resources and using them for ourselves, we are called to give, serve, and love other people and in doing so, create a community of believers where all achieve sufficiency and none lack because surplus is also rejected. This woman had spent her life helping those who were seemingly insignificant to the world, especially the widows, and would probably have become rather insignificant in the eyes of the world around her at the time, but she was not insignificant within the people of God or to Peter. He immediately went to see her.

As Peter arrived we can almost imagine the touching scene as those that she had shared her life with, showed Peter the clothes that she made for them and surely shared with him all of the ways that she let the words of Jesus inhabit her life and become who she was. They wanted Peter to know how loved Tabitha was and how much she had loved them not because they were poor but because they were part of God’s family. It was the Tabithas who made up the very fabric of the Christian community and who continue to make it up today. They are the tireless and quite servants who never cease in serving and loving others because they know that that is how they demonstrate their true love and loyalty to God (see 1 Jn. 4:19-21). Tabitha didn’t go around helping poor people and becoming involved in causes because she wanted to fulfill some duty or ease her own guilt. She had joined a community of God’s people that had pledged to live their lives in mutual submission to one another (Eph. 5:21) and live with the interests of one another as their key priority (see 2 Cor. 5:15 and Phil. 2:3-4).

As Peter entered into the room where Tabitha was lying, it is hard to imagine that his mind didn’t drift back to the room of Jairus’ daughter that he had entered with Jesus not too many years before (Mk. 5:37-43). He sent everyone out of the room just as Jesus had done and then he turned in prayer to the one who could raise people from the dead. After he prayed, Peter’s mind probably recalled Jesus turning to that little girl and resolutely saying “Talitha koum,” which means “Little girl, get up.” Perhaps Peter remembered those words fondly as her turned confidently in the power of the Lord and said “Tabitha Koum,” or “Tabitha, get up.”

Peter, no doubt, took great joy in taking Tabitha, now raised from the dead, and presenting her to those who loved her so dearly. Her life had been about the benefit of others. And now her death and the subsequent miracle of being raised from the dead would also continue to benefit others as word of her raising would cause many more to believe in Jesus as the Messiah and enter into God’s family.

Before Peter left Joppa, though, he stayed with Simon the Tanner. This is one more important detail given to us by Luke as he continues to describe the social barriers that were quickly disintegrating in the family of God. Tanners were looked down upon and often ostracized in the Jewish culture because they were constantly handling dead animals and were continually ceremonially unclean. This would have been rather shocking, but then Luke was making clear that Jesus meant what he said when he quoted from Isaiah 61, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk. 4:18-19). At every turn this passage reminds us that the people that are most forgettable to the world are not forgettable to God, nor should they be amongst his people.

Devotional Thought
When you die what will the believers say about you? Will they be able to fill a room with the evidence and the tales of all that you did in the service and love of others? Are you truly using what God has given you to gain friends and prepare for his eternal kingdom?

Acts 9:19-31

2011-01-31T07:19:00.000-06:00

Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. 20 At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. 21 All those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?” 22 Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Messiah.
23 After many days had gone by, there was a conspiracy among the Jews to kill him, 24 but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. 25 But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall.
26 When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. 28 So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. 29 He talked and debated with the Hellenistic Jews,[a] but they tried to kill him. 30 When the believers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.
31 Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.

Dig Deeper
There are still Christians in the world today that live in constant fear of real, physical persecution and even death for their faith. But most Christians, especially those in the United States, know virtually nothing about that life and we rarely, if ever, encounter true persecution. The early church, however, faced it all the time and they had to be on their toes and constantly aware of those who sought to destroy them. Saul was the chief among those persecutors in the early days of the church but then rumors began to spread around that not only had this chief thorn in the side of the church ceased his damaging activities but he had actually become one of them. Obvious questions had to be raised among them concerning whether or not he could be trusted. Would it be out of the realm of possibility to believe that Saul might fake a conversion and even follow through on this charade for months and even years in order to work his way into the presence and trust of the leaders of the movement, the apostles? Once he had gained their confidence the whole movement could be brought to its knees in one fell swoop.

It’s easy to see why the church might feel this way and react with such hesitancy but there is even more to their response than that. Yes, there was an initial distrust of Saul but enter into this story for a moment and imagine yourself in a similar position. Imagine that someone came out publicly as an opponent of your current church family and began to gain the power and support needed to destroy your church. Imagine that they began to speak publicly of wiping out your church and hunting down every single member and making an example of them so that other Christians in other cities would think twice about remaining loyal to this movement of Messiah people. Now imagine how you would feel as this persecutor of your church led an effort to have a beloved and important leader in your church dragged out into the street and killed with everyone there to watch. Can you even begin to fathom how difficult that would be. What would you be feeling? How difficult would Jesus’ words to love your enemies seem under those circumstances? How hard would that be for your church to deal with? What would you tell your dear brother’s widow and children? How challenging would it be to continue to preach about hope in the resurrection and an unfailing commitment to love those who persecute you? That would take real conviction wouldn’t it?

Can you truly imagine all of that and enter into this story? Now really challenge yourself. How would you feel about that man that had persecuted your church, killed your friend, and promised to finish the job with the rest of the believers soon? How would you feel if he suddenly popped up and said that he had come to believe in your Messiah and that he not only wanted forgiveness but wanted to become one of you. Certainly you would be filled with mistrust and caution but overcoming that would be the easy part. Can you imagine loving this man as a brother and allowing him to move among you as one of you? Can you imagine the other friends and family and even the wife of your slain brother in Christ doing the same? That kind of Christianity is not for the weak of stomach. That is big-boy Christianity. Yet, it is exactly what we see in the early church. What Luke is describing is something more than your run-of-the-mill religion. This was what happened when a community of people took seriously Jesus’ call to live by love (cf. Jn. 13:34-35).

After his incredible conversion and baptism into Christ, Saul spent several days with the disciples but he wasn’t just enjoying the fellowship with those that were his enemies just a few days previous. He began to immediately preach that Jesus was the Son of God after all. This teaching was not unique to Saul but he certainly seemed to have stressed it more than anyone else. The term “the Son of God” held deep significance for someone like Saul because it was a term that had come to be connected specifically with God’s promised Messiah based on such Old Testament passages as Psalm 2. The term also became an important concept for the early Christians because they saw it as important to establish Jesus’ status as God’s true son. This identity, they believed, was established by God (Matt 3:17; 17:5) and showed that Jesus was the true inheritor of God’s family rather than Israel who had first been called God’s son (Ex. 4:22). Eventually the term came to be used almost as a shorthand way of describing the strange truth that Jesus was somehow an extension of God himself and was a marker of his identity. In those early days of Saul’s preaching, however, it is most certain that Saul’s primary contention was the Jesus really was the Messiah. His death on the cross was not a mark of his shame but a necessary step as God’s faithful and suffering servant who was resurrected by God, thus declaring his sonship (see Romans 1:1-4 as Paul would develop that thought years later).

Saul’s sudden and dramatic switch was confusing to those in Damascus, to say the least. It would be even more shocking than if Osama Bin Laden suddenly appeared on the Fox Television Network to espouse the great qualities of the United States and to identify himself as an American Patriot who was now seeking citizenship in the land of the free and the home of the brave. People simply did not know what to do with all of this or what to make of it.

It appears that during the “many days” that Luke quickly refers to includes a time period of nearly three years that he spent in Arabia (Gal. 1:17). During that time in Arabia he continued to preach the gospel and apparently made an enemy of the Arabian King Aretas who, on Saul’s return to Damascus, worked with the governor in Damascus to try to get rid of Saul (2 Cor. 11:32-33). Saul’s friends helped him escape Damascus by lowering him over the wall, an act that Saul would use to demonstrate his weakness and humility by human standards in 2 Corinthians 11:32-33. But these friends were even more than just that as Luke already calls them his followers. In just a few short years, Saul went from going to Damascus to kill Christians to having them see him as something of a leader and worth following. The transformation of the gospel in Saul’s life was incredible.

By the time Saul arrived in Jerusalem we might think that he was greeted with open arms but that was not the case. These were people that were committed to living as Jesus’ family but they were still human beings with human fears and hurts. Saul had caused them great damage and had killed their dear brother Stephen. Now here he was just a few years later wanting to be accepted by the believers as one of them. Surely Saul had to understand the situation and his writings never display anything other than great humility and and an overwhelming feeling of grace that he had been accepted into God’s family, but that had to be in doubt, at least for a moment as he arrived in Jerusalem.

Saul needed someone to believe in him and in the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in his life. He found just such a man in Barnabas, a man who had already demonstrated his unyielding commitment to God’s family (Acts 4:36). Saul, verified Barnabas, really had become one of them. This was no mere ploy. He had boldly preached the word of God in Damascus and had come into contention with the Hellenistic Jews, the very group of which Saul had likely been a part and had worked with to kill Stephen.

In the context of all of that, then, verse 28 is rather remarkable. Saul was accepted into the Christian community and he moved freely among them. It is difficult to overstate the amount of love, forgiveness, and belief that this new way of living and viewing the world was really God’s will that this would have taken to bring Saul into the family as one of their own. From a worldly point of view this was crazy. But they were becoming the community of love that Jesus said they would (Jn. 13:34-35) and were truly loving their enemies (Matt. 5:44). Although Saul was only in Jerusalem for about two weeks and met only Peter and James among the apostles (Gal. 1:18-20), his welcome into the community in Jerusalem is still remarkable.

As Saul continued his preaching activities in Jerusalem, mostly with those that he was apparently the most intimately familiar, the Hellenistic Jews, they became contentious to the point that they wanted to kill Saul. He truly was beginning to find out how much he would suffer for this life of Christ, but this was only the beginning. The other believers, however, realized that Saul needed to go elsewhere so they sent him to Caesarea and eventually home to Tarsus. It is likely that this decision was a combination of the realization that Saul’s presence was bringing unnecessary pressure down on the Christian community and that he could be of more use fulfilling his God-given role as apostle to the Gentiles by leaving Jerusalem.

We will not see Saul again until several years later, still in Tarsus (Acts 11:25), but the stage has been set for the next important step in the spreading of the gospel. God’s promise was always that his family would consist of all nations and that had to include the mission to the Gentiles. God had laid the framework and called the people that he wanted to carry that message forward. In the meantime, the existing bands of Jewish and Samaritan believers received a bit of a respite from persecution and these traditional rivals could already think of themselves as “the” church. They were one already and soon, as a result of the work of Saul and others, the Gentiles would join them in the family of the Messiah.

Devotional Thought
Saul’s conversion from persecutor of the church to proponent of Jesus as the Christ is nothing short of amazing. Surely it would have seemed to the early Christians that Saul was beyond conversion. It would have seemed impossible. But what is impossible with man is quite possible with God. But take a moment to think of this. Who is the Saul in your life? Who seems beyond conversion in your mind? Make a commitment to spend time everyday praying for them. If God can turn Saul around, why not the person you’re thinking of?

Acts 9:10-19

2011-01-28T06:44:00.000-06:00

10 In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”

13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

Dig Deeper
I don’t watch too many television shows on a regular basis anymore but one show that I have caught a few times and kind of enjoy is a show called “White Collar.” The premise of the show centers around an FBI agent and one of the best counterfeiters and high end theft artists in the world. The FBI agent, who is very skilled in his own right, managed to be the first person to hunt down and actually capture the thief. Once he was in custody he was given a choice. He could stay in jail for a very long time or he could come to work for the FBI as a consultant and help them catch other difficult-to-apprehend criminals. The thief decided that he would take the deal and work with the FBI, which is where the show picks up. Each week the two men that were once foes now have to figure out how to work together for a common goal. One thing that constantly serves as a point of friction and moves the plot of the show along is that it is very difficult for these two men to fully trust one another. And it goes beyond just those two. Whenever one of them has to go into the “world” of the other man, everyone around them is very distrustful. That is especially true of the thief who is constantly questioned and mistrusted by everyone around him. The show demonstrates the human truth that people can occasionally change their circumstances but it is much more difficult venture to expect others to change their perception of that person despite their change in circumstances. Trust is a tricky thing.

As you read this particular passage try to go back through it carefully and enter the story from Ananias’ point of view. We don’t know much about this Ananias other than what we learn about him from this encounter with Paul, and he quietly slips into the shadows of history after this encounter. But imagine what he must have felt and been thinking as this scene played out. He was a man full of faith who had come to trust in the life of Christ over his own and had been baptized into the family of Christ, pledging himself to live a crucified life that would be the expression of Christ’s life and not his own (cf. Gal. 2:20). Yet and still, this incident must have pushed his faith to limits that he would not have previously known.

Ananias apparently lived in Damascus at the time that Saul was on his way there. He must have been quite bold in his faith to have stayed there with the specter of Saul making his way to the city with the express purpose of rooting out Christians and bringing them to Jerusalem in chains. The Lord came to Ananias in a vision and told him to go the house of Judas on Straight Street. It surely wuold have been quite exhilarating to have been called by God himself to a mission, but the Lord wasn’t done. Once he got to the house he would meet a man named Saul of Tarsus there. His internal response must have been something like “excuse me? You want me to meet who?” This was dangerous stuff; almost crazy. The fact that God informed him that Saul had also received a vision from God and was there waiting for Ananias to come and restore his sight could hardly have been terribly comforting. What must Ananias have been thinking and feeling? What would you be thinking if God came to you in a vision and called you to go to Pakistan and seek out Osama Bin Laden who would be waiting for you to help him convert to Christianity? That sounds crazy and dangerous wouldn’t it? You’re mind would be full of perfectly good reasons why no sane person would ever do such a foolhardy thing.

In fact, Ananias did have a few thoughts for the Lord. He was gently protesting the way so many other biblical figures did when they were called by God to step out in faith in ways that made little sense. Ananias had heard about Saul, as most Christians in Jerusalem, Damascus, and the surrounding areas had. He well knew what Saul had been doing, saying, and most importantly threatening. Perhaps God didn’t understand that Saul was there to arrest them all and possibly worse. If anything, maybe Saul had somehow cooked up a plot where he was faking conversion so that he could get access to the Christian community. That was certainly nefarious but there was just no way in Ananias’ mind that Saul could ever be trusted. Surely God must understand that? We have to give credit where it is due, though, because although Ananias was raising some issues and mildly protesting, he was never disrespectful or disobedient.

But God heard enough of his logical reasoning and ended the conversation with one word; “Go.” God understood exactly who Saul was and what he had been up to. But this was the man he had chosen for a very specific mission. He would be God’s special instrument to go the Gentiles and their kings as well as have a profound influence on the people of Israel. We don’t know why God chose to use Saul in such a powerful way considering that he was not one of Jesus’ apostles and had not spent time with Jesus during his earthly ministry, but perhaps that’s the point. Saul being brought in God’s family in such an important position sent the message that all people were redeemable by God. There would be no special inner circle of important and privileged people in God’s family. Even a persecutor of the church could be used by God to spread the message of the gospel of his Messiah.

The conversion of Saul is an important factor, though, in confirming the truth of the gospel and the reasons for the spread of early Christianity. The early Christians claimed that Jesus had resurrected from the dead and produced over 500 eyewitnesses to back up their claims. But the conversion of Saul gives special evidence. What possible reason could Saul have to convert unless he really had seen the resurrected Christ? The only consistent and logical reason is that he really did see what he claimed to have seen. After all, he wasn’t called to a life of privilege and power. From the very outset God promised that Saul would find out just how much he would suffer for the name and life of Christ (Hebrews used the term “name” to describe the totality of a person in such a way that “name” and “life” were often virtually interchangeable, based on the context). The one who was determined to cause the people of Jesus to suffer would now join them and suffer for Jesus himself.

Saul’s experience during those three days is incredibly instructive for those of us today who live in a time and place where the idea of true salvation relies much more on traditions than on the biblical witness itself. Saul had been confronted with a truth that shook his world to its very foundations. It left him unable to eat and drink for three days, doing nothing but remaining in a state of fasting and prayer. Everything he believed that he had known about God had been shown to him to be wrong in an instant. This was all a result of his interaction with the resurrected Christ.

So is it safe to assume that during those three days Saul’s worldview had shifted radically and he had come to a belief in Jesus as the Messiah and as God’s agent for salvation into his family and reconciliation? It not only seems safe, it seems the only possible reality. Saul had come to believe in Jesus as the Christ, God’s Messiah. This is instructive to those who desire to reduce salvation to nothing more than a mental agreement that Jesus is savior or with the act of praying Jesus into one’s heart (an action that is never mentioned or carried out anywhere in the Bible). Saul had certainly come to a belief in Christ but he had not been filled with the Holy Spirit and his sins had not yet been forgiven (Acts 22:16) because he had not called upon the name of the Lord through the birth of being baptized into the life of Christ.

Luke recorded, in verse 14, that Ananias had referred to Christians as those who called on the name of the Lord. Saul, Luke records the Lord as saying, would suffer for the name. And Saul would be baptized into, what went without having to say, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38). The term name, as mentioned above, could be used to refer to the totality of the person and, depending upon the context, their authority, the complete aspect of their personality, and most often the life. When New Testament writers used the word “name” in the context of Jesus Christ it is almost always in reference to his life. When it was declared that someone should be baptized into the name of Jesus, the reference was to the life and identity of Christ (see Rom. 6:1-14: Gal. 3:26-28; Col. 2:9-3:3). Luke clearly was not intending to portray that Saul had entered into the family of Christ and received the gift of the Spirit (cf. Acts 2:38) through merely understanding that Jesus was the Messiah and that he needed to trust in him for salvation. That was total belief but Saul also needed total conversion and total commitment.

That’s where his baptism into Christ came. It was only when Ananias baptized him into Christ that he truly was totally converted and entered into the family of God where God’s children have their sins forgiven (Acts 22:16). Many modern Christian commentators have spent much time trying to make a distinction between Christian belief and Christian baptism into Christ. But this is a distinction that would have been largely nonsensical to Luke and the other early Christians. In the way that Jews and early Christians thought, your beliefs and actions went hand in hand, with your actions demonstrating your beliefs. You simply could not distinguish one from the other and call the mental action good while calling the accompanying physical action an act of earning one’s salvation. Immersion was to the early church the moment of being born into God’s family.

Paul had experienced total belief by being confronted by the resurrected Christ. He had then experienced total conversion as he was baptized and was subsequently filled with the Holy Spirit. What he would spend the rest of his life experiencing, and what God promised to him here through Ananias was total commitment. Paul would truly discover just how much he would have to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ.

Devotional Thought
True faith requires not just total belief but also total conversion and total commitment. It is great to have a belief in Jesus but what about total conversion by being baptized into his life (dying to self, receiving the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit), and total commitment? How are you doing in those areas?

Acts 9:1-9

2011-01-26T08:03:00.000-06:00

Saul’s Conversion
1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

Dig Deeper
Have you ever been absolutely sure of something even though other people told you that you were wrong? They might have been convinced of their position but you just knew that you were right and were sticking to your guns. I know I have been there. A few weeks ago I was looking for an important piece of paper that had some very vital notes on it. I needed that piece of paper right then but suddenly I couldn’t find it so I went rummaging through the house looking for it. To add to my earnestness, I absolutely cannot stand it when I can’t find something that I need. That’s an unusual situation for me and I don’t like it when I find myself unable to find what I want. As I was looking, though, my wife came in and asked what I was looking for. When I told her, she mentioned that she thought it was in a stack of papers on the kitchen counter. I had already looked through that stack and so I confidently told her that it wasn’t in there but that I needed to find it quickly. She repeated that she was pretty sure she saw it there a few days previous. I was annoyed now and told her that I knew it wasn’t in there because I had looked and I would appreciate if she would help me look for this paper. She went into our room presumably to look for the paper in there but by this time I had looked everywhere that it could have been and I was nearing despair of finding this paper. I was beginning to formulate a new plan of what I would now have to do without these notes. As I was standing there thinking, I put my hand on the counter and realized that it had fallen on that stack of papers. For some reason, I pulled back about half of the stack and there staring at me light a blinding white light was the paper I had been looking for. I suddenly had a sinking feeling. My wife had been right. I had been wrong. And I had wasted a lot of time looking for something that was exactly where my wife said it had been. I had just known that she was wrong, though, but now came the dizzying truth that I was the one that was wrong. It can be a difficult thing to swallow even with little things like a lost piece of paper.

Saul had spent the balance of his life serving the God of Israel with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He had given his life to a study of the Scriptures and was so committed to serving the almighty God and defending his cause that he was willing to prove his zeal by doing whatever it would take. Oh sure, he had heard these Christians claim that those who rejected Jesus as Messiah were wrong and that God would prove that one day, but Saul could safely ignore those claims. Jesus was a failed Messiah “wanna-be” that was all. All they needed to do was look at his crucifixion. In that moment, Paul had looked at the idea of Jesus being the Messiah and could see clearly that he wasn’t. No Messiah would die at the hands of the pagan Romans on a shameful cross. That was how criminals died. He saw nothing there of note, and was sure that he was doing the right thing by rejecting this blasphemy towards the true God. He would demonstrate his loyalty to God by ridding Israel of this heresy as quickly as was humanly possible.

Although some have argued against Saul’s legal ability to go around killing disciples, it is certain that the early Christian communities would have taken his threats quite seriously. Saul was there giving approval to Stephen’s stoning death and it is quite possible that Saul and Stephen knew each other before Stephen’s conversion to Christianity. If that is how someone he knew was treated what would that mean for the many Christians that didn’t know him. Those threats were serious, and whether they were strictly legal or not, Saul seemed to have enough authority behind him in the form of approval letters from the Sanhedrin, and he certainly had the will and determination to carry out those threats. Stephen was willing to die for what he believed to be the truth and Saul was willing to kill for what he believed to be the truth. It was certainly a stark difference. As F.F. Bruce stated in his book “Paul”, Stephen argued that “the new has come, therefore the old must go.” While Saul reasoned that “the old must stay, therefore the new must go.” Something clearly had to give.

Saul’s zeal is demonstrated in that he wasn’t just willing to deal with issues with Christians as they came up. He wanted to go hunt down disciples and eradicate this movement before it could spread any further than it already had. He was going to round them up and take them to prison in Jerusalem, and seemed to be quite willing to put to death any who caused trouble or refused to recant. As Paul packed up for his trip to Damascus, a town about 150 miles from Jerusalem, he had letters of authority in his bag and the determined warmth in his heart of knowing that he was doing the right thing.

We don’t know and aren’t told what Paul was doing as he made the journey between Jerusalem and Damascus but we can probably guess that he may have been praying and asking for continued guidance from the Lord or perhaps he was meditating on the presence of the Lord. But whatever he was doing, he was suddenly shaken into the moment as a bright light from heaven flashed all around him. The light was so bright and unexpected that it caused Saul to fall to the ground. Paul had presumably never experienced anything like this before but he would have almost assuredly associated this light with the Shekinah glory of God described in the Old Testament. The divine voice coming from the realm of heaven was similar to other instances of God’s voice being heard (Gen. 22:11; 46:2; Ex. 31-6; 1 Sam. 3:4; Isa. 6:8; Lk. 3:22; 9:35).

But this voice had a question for Saul. Why was he persecuting me, asked the divine voice? This must have been a shocking question for Saul. Who was he persecuting? Far be it from Saul to ever do anything that would injure the almighty God. He had made a life of serving him, not persecuting him. He was defending God. He just couldn’t be wrong about that. But then the voice clearly identified himself. It was Jesus. In that moment Saul’s life changed forever.

Saul would later say that at this moment God had revealed his son to him (Gal. 1:16); he had seen Jesus face to face for himself (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8). Jesus was alive. His disciples had been right and Saul had been monumentally wrong. He could no longer deny that as he stood stunned in the divine presence of Jesus. That was the kicker. He hadn’t just seen Jesus, he was seeing him in the realm of heaven. This meant that Jesus had truly ascended to the right hand of the Father, just as Stephen had claimed. He was the Messiah. All of God’s promises had really been answered “yes” in him (2 Cor. 1:20). It was in this moment that Paul began the journey of discovery that would eventually lead to his realization that he had been viewing Jesus from a worldly point of view (2 Cor. 5:16). Saul had looked at the cross as evidence of Jesus’ failure as a claimed Messiah, but he would soon realize that it was his very confirmation. The cross was how all of God’s promises came together in Christ. From this moment on, Saul would no longer view Jesus the Messiah from a worldly point of view.

Perhaps the next most shocking realization beyond the fact that Jesus really had resurrected from the dead and was the Messiah ruling from the heavenly realm, was that these people that Paul had been so full of zeal to hunt down were the King’s people. To strike them was to strike the ascended Jesus. Saul would learn the lesson well that whatever was true of the Messiah was true of his people. When Saul persecuted them, it was really Christ he was persecuting because they were an extension of him. Not only that, but Saul would later go on to realize that all that Christ had in his identity as the Son of God and the true Messiah also belonged to those in Christ (see Rom. 6:1-14).

Not only did Jesus identify himself and place himself as the true target of Saul’s persecutions, he also ordered that Saul go into the city of Damascus and await further instructions. We are told that his companions heard a sound but that Christ did not reveal himself to them, they could only see the bright light and hear a noise but could not distinguish a voice (Acts 22:9; cf. Jn. 12:29 for a similar phenomenon). Saul’s friends led him into the city. Once there, Saul was so stunned by his encounter with the resurrected Jesus that he spent the next three days still blinded (perhaps as God’s way of showing Saul that he had been blind spiritually all along) unable to eat or drink. He apparently did nothing more than pray and fast. Saul had always had total belief in the God of Israel and now he had come to total belief in Jesus Christ as his saving agent but he was about to learn that not only does faith require that we believe in God but also that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (cf. Heb. 11:6). Saul had come to a point of total belief but he would soon find out about total conversion and total commitment. He would soon find out what it would really require of him to serve the living God.

Devotional Thought
Many people already feel like they have had their “Damascus road” experience in coming to the realization of the truth about God and Jesus but feel very uncomfortable with the thought that God might want to use them as his “bright light” in the life of someone else. Ask God to use you as his “light” to shine into the life of someone and be prepared to be bold as you lovingly show them that everything they thought they knew was perhaps not quite accurate.