Part 1: Asbury: A Quiet Spiritual Awakening
It began as a simple chapel service on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, at Asbury University, a private Christian university in Wilmore, Kentucky that has a student population of just over 1600 students. The speaker was a rather plain looking and unassuming Presbyterian minister. The text that he spoke on, Romans 12: 9 – 23, is hardly the stuff that you would think would launch a revival. In summary, it’s a list of 30 commands that starts with “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil and hold fast to what is good.” and it ends with “Do not be overcome with evil but overcome evil with good.” And in the middle, there are commands like “Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them,” and “never avenge yourselves but leave it to the wrath of God.” Like I said, hardly revival launching material. It’s not heavy in theology but rather almost a list of behavioral characteristics of what the life of a person who is trying to follow Jesus should look like. And the speaker’s concluding comments were that the 30 commands were impossible to keep unless someone had experienced the love of Christ and was experiencing it on a daily basis. (After driving in rush hour traffic on I-5 South, I have to agree with him on that point. There are some days that between the time constraints on my schedule, my mood, and the other drivers on the road, that I have fallen well short of the behavioral standard described in Romans 12.) Anyway, at the end of the chapel service, the speaker then invited those who wanted to remain and pray to do so. And a few students took him up on it.
At first, it was just a small group of students praying and worshiping. Not all that uncommon, by the way, in a small Christian institution. Then it happened. Like a smoldering cigarette butt thrown from a car on a dry forest road in the middle of July, a student felt compelled to begin publicly confessing his rebellion, his sins if you want to use a religious term, and the fires of spiritual awakening began to ignite. The mood in the room, according to the people who were there, changed. The people who were there began praying and worshiping with deeper sincerity and openness and those smoldering fires of spiritual awakening began to burn in earnest as God began to move. According to Asbury Student Body President, Alison Perfater, “for some reason, the chapel service didn’t end.” And as the hours went on, the numbers increased. Twenty-four hours later, they were still there and the numbers were still increasing. One day became two days, became three days, became one week, then two weeks and finally, seventeen days later, the chapel service ended. In terms of numbers of people who visited Asbury University, they came from all over the nation, and that’s not me exaggerating. According to the New York Times, it’s estimated that 50,000 people visited Asbury University in the seventeen days to take part in worship and the spread was much greater on social media. By the time the revival had concluded, hashtag “asburyrivival” had over 63 million views on TikTok.
What observers had noticed is the simplicity of the worship service that lacked much of the trappings of contemporary worship services. Just simple acoustic guitars and musical instruments if any were used at all and a lot of songs were sung a cappella. The atmosphere was described as calm, reverent, and what was really striking at least to many people who were just observing it, was who seemed to be driving this movement. It was a movement made up of young people, Generation Z, a generation that has been described as the most irreligious generation in all of history. According to Perfater, “there’s a young army of Christians, rising up to claim Christianity as their own.” The evidence surrounding this event would seem to corroborate that opinion as many of the visitors to Asbury fit into that age demographic.
So, what do I make of all of this? It looks to me like God is on the move and He’s doing something. People have been praying for revival in the United States for many years, especially at Asbury. Are the events at Asbury University the beginning of the answer to those prayers? Possibly. You know, if they are, it wouldn’t be the first time that God has used a revival in Kentucky to start an awakening that would sweep through the United States. The late 1700s, the early 1800’s, the early 1900’s, and most recently, in 1970, a revival started right at Asbury University that ushered in the Jesus Movement of the 1970’s. To use an athletic analogy, it’s like Asbury is one of God’s “go to” places when He wants to do something big in the nation.
Another thing that stands out to me is the timing of how everything fit together. The events at Asbury University began four days before the Super Bowl and for those of you who enjoy watching the commercials on Super Bowl Sunday, listen to where I am going with this. At a cost of $7million for every thirty seconds, the “He Gets Us” ads focusing entirely on Jesus happened simultaneously as the Asbury Revival, a free event, was picking up momentum. That’s not a coincidence, to me anyway, this looks like this one came across God’s desk and He orchestrated its timing from start to finish as suddenly Jesus was front page news. You know it’s kind of interesting that to a society that frankly wishes that Jesus would just take his assigned seat in the Hall of Fame of Outdated and Obsolete Beliefs, (He can even wear a gold blazer if He wants to) Jesus has given notice in a big way that He is still someone to be reckoned with and based on His track record, He always will be.
Lastly, I think that the events surrounding Asbury would indicate that there’s a spiritual hunger amongst Generation Z that no one knew was there. It’s kind of like when you haven’t had anything to eat in a while but you think that it’s no big deal. You don’t really feel all that hungry until out of boredom you grab a random potato chip out of the chip bowl and you suddenly realize that you’re starving. Or perhaps you go to the grocery store to do your shopping and you walk by the deli section and you catch the aroma of whatever they’re cooking back there and you’re instantly hungry. That’s kinda what happened here. There were members of Generation Z who got a whiff of what God is doing and what He’s like and some of them who previously didn’t want in…. well, they want in now. They want to claim this faith for their own.
In terms of how we evaluate all of this, I think that it’s way too early to tell what the end result of all of this will be. There were lives changed at Asbury University for sure and many of the people whose lives were changed live in other parts of the nation. There were student leaders from other universities in attendance who got a taste of this and left inspired to make a difference back at their local campuses so, only time will tell how far reaching the effects of this will be. Historically, the full effects of an event like this might not become evident for several decades, like ten, twenty, thirty, even forty years perhaps. Based on the character of God however, this has all the appearances that He’s up to something though, at least in my opinion.
What do we do with it. I want to talk to the Boomers and Generation X people for a minute. We have to nurture this and pray for this. Guys, our time is almost up. Most of us won’t still be here in thirty years so let’s give these young Christians a shot. Let’s help them in whatever way we can. Pray for them, encourage them and I’m going to warn you up front. They’re liable to do some things differently than the way we did things …so what? We did the same thing. We did things differently than our parents did them and well…it didn’t turn out that bad did it? Did it?
In addition, I think that we need to go back in time about 2000 years when there was another small movement just getting started. We know these people as the people who were part of the early church recorded in the Book of Acts. The church was growing and the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Judaism, didn’t know what to do with them. Wait a minute. Let me take that back. Actually, they had a pretty good idea what they wanted to do with them. They wanted to kill them but, in the middle of the debate, an elderly Pharisee named Gamaliel advised the body to carefully consider what they were doing. In a rather dignified manner he said, “If this movement (the early church) is of men, it will fail but if it is of God, you will not be able to stop it and, if you try and hinder it, you might even find yourselves fighting against God.” From his grave somewhere in modern day Israel, Gamaliel still speaks. If this movement is just a man manufactured event with emotions and religious trappings, it’s going to peter out. However, if God is behind this, it will be successful and it will accomplish the purposes which it was orchestrated to accomplish. Personally, I think that we have to assume that God is behind these events until we get proof that He’s not. And for those of us who consider ourselves to be leaders, we’d better get ready because there’s going to be a bunch of new young Jesus followers who are going to need to be discipled.
Or maybe you’re one of those people who actually didn’t think that Jesus was all that much of a big deal but, based on what’s going on in your life these days and what you’ve seen on social media in the past three weeks, well, you’ve kinda gotten a whiff of Jesus’ aroma and maybe, just maybe you’re thinking, He’s worth checking out. I’d encourage you to do so. If you are looking for places to start investigating, you could even start here. For the next couple of months, I’m going to be doing a series of articles on the church that was born out of the first spiritual awakening recorded in the New Testament in the Book of Acts. My posts and stories are designed with the people who would classify themselves as seekers, specifically in mind. Post days are usually every Monday and I’m going to start next week with some things about the author and why I think that we can take him and what he has to say, seriously. Hope to see you then. Until then, God bless.
At first, it was just a small group of students praying and worshiping. Not all that uncommon, by the way, in a small Christian institution. Then it happened. Like a smoldering cigarette butt thrown from a car on a dry forest road in the middle of July, a student felt compelled to begin publicly confessing his rebellion, his sins if you want to use a religious term, and the fires of spiritual awakening began to ignite. The mood in the room, according to the people who were there, changed. The people who were there began praying and worshiping with deeper sincerity and openness and those smoldering fires of spiritual awakening began to burn in earnest as God began to move. According to Asbury Student Body President, Alison Perfater, “for some reason, the chapel service didn’t end.” And as the hours went on, the numbers increased. Twenty-four hours later, they were still there and the numbers were still increasing. One day became two days, became three days, became one week, then two weeks and finally, seventeen days later, the chapel service ended. In terms of numbers of people who visited Asbury University, they came from all over the nation, and that’s not me exaggerating. According to the New York Times, it’s estimated that 50,000 people visited Asbury University in the seventeen days to take part in worship and the spread was much greater on social media. By the time the revival had concluded, hashtag “asburyrivival” had over 63 million views on TikTok.
What observers had noticed is the simplicity of the worship service that lacked much of the trappings of contemporary worship services. Just simple acoustic guitars and musical instruments if any were used at all and a lot of songs were sung a cappella. The atmosphere was described as calm, reverent, and what was really striking at least to many people who were just observing it, was who seemed to be driving this movement. It was a movement made up of young people, Generation Z, a generation that has been described as the most irreligious generation in all of history. According to Perfater, “there’s a young army of Christians, rising up to claim Christianity as their own.” The evidence surrounding this event would seem to corroborate that opinion as many of the visitors to Asbury fit into that age demographic.
So, what do I make of all of this? It looks to me like God is on the move and He’s doing something. People have been praying for revival in the United States for many years, especially at Asbury. Are the events at Asbury University the beginning of the answer to those prayers? Possibly. You know, if they are, it wouldn’t be the first time that God has used a revival in Kentucky to start an awakening that would sweep through the United States. The late 1700s, the early 1800’s, the early 1900’s, and most recently, in 1970, a revival started right at Asbury University that ushered in the Jesus Movement of the 1970’s. To use an athletic analogy, it’s like Asbury is one of God’s “go to” places when He wants to do something big in the nation.
Another thing that stands out to me is the timing of how everything fit together. The events at Asbury University began four days before the Super Bowl and for those of you who enjoy watching the commercials on Super Bowl Sunday, listen to where I am going with this. At a cost of $7million for every thirty seconds, the “He Gets Us” ads focusing entirely on Jesus happened simultaneously as the Asbury Revival, a free event, was picking up momentum. That’s not a coincidence, to me anyway, this looks like this one came across God’s desk and He orchestrated its timing from start to finish as suddenly Jesus was front page news. You know it’s kind of interesting that to a society that frankly wishes that Jesus would just take his assigned seat in the Hall of Fame of Outdated and Obsolete Beliefs, (He can even wear a gold blazer if He wants to) Jesus has given notice in a big way that He is still someone to be reckoned with and based on His track record, He always will be.
Lastly, I think that the events surrounding Asbury would indicate that there’s a spiritual hunger amongst Generation Z that no one knew was there. It’s kind of like when you haven’t had anything to eat in a while but you think that it’s no big deal. You don’t really feel all that hungry until out of boredom you grab a random potato chip out of the chip bowl and you suddenly realize that you’re starving. Or perhaps you go to the grocery store to do your shopping and you walk by the deli section and you catch the aroma of whatever they’re cooking back there and you’re instantly hungry. That’s kinda what happened here. There were members of Generation Z who got a whiff of what God is doing and what He’s like and some of them who previously didn’t want in…. well, they want in now. They want to claim this faith for their own.
In terms of how we evaluate all of this, I think that it’s way too early to tell what the end result of all of this will be. There were lives changed at Asbury University for sure and many of the people whose lives were changed live in other parts of the nation. There were student leaders from other universities in attendance who got a taste of this and left inspired to make a difference back at their local campuses so, only time will tell how far reaching the effects of this will be. Historically, the full effects of an event like this might not become evident for several decades, like ten, twenty, thirty, even forty years perhaps. Based on the character of God however, this has all the appearances that He’s up to something though, at least in my opinion.
What do we do with it. I want to talk to the Boomers and Generation X people for a minute. We have to nurture this and pray for this. Guys, our time is almost up. Most of us won’t still be here in thirty years so let’s give these young Christians a shot. Let’s help them in whatever way we can. Pray for them, encourage them and I’m going to warn you up front. They’re liable to do some things differently than the way we did things …so what? We did the same thing. We did things differently than our parents did them and well…it didn’t turn out that bad did it? Did it?
In addition, I think that we need to go back in time about 2000 years when there was another small movement just getting started. We know these people as the people who were part of the early church recorded in the Book of Acts. The church was growing and the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Judaism, didn’t know what to do with them. Wait a minute. Let me take that back. Actually, they had a pretty good idea what they wanted to do with them. They wanted to kill them but, in the middle of the debate, an elderly Pharisee named Gamaliel advised the body to carefully consider what they were doing. In a rather dignified manner he said, “If this movement (the early church) is of men, it will fail but if it is of God, you will not be able to stop it and, if you try and hinder it, you might even find yourselves fighting against God.” From his grave somewhere in modern day Israel, Gamaliel still speaks. If this movement is just a man manufactured event with emotions and religious trappings, it’s going to peter out. However, if God is behind this, it will be successful and it will accomplish the purposes which it was orchestrated to accomplish. Personally, I think that we have to assume that God is behind these events until we get proof that He’s not. And for those of us who consider ourselves to be leaders, we’d better get ready because there’s going to be a bunch of new young Jesus followers who are going to need to be discipled.
Or maybe you’re one of those people who actually didn’t think that Jesus was all that much of a big deal but, based on what’s going on in your life these days and what you’ve seen on social media in the past three weeks, well, you’ve kinda gotten a whiff of Jesus’ aroma and maybe, just maybe you’re thinking, He’s worth checking out. I’d encourage you to do so. If you are looking for places to start investigating, you could even start here. For the next couple of months, I’m going to be doing a series of articles on the church that was born out of the first spiritual awakening recorded in the New Testament in the Book of Acts. My posts and stories are designed with the people who would classify themselves as seekers, specifically in mind. Post days are usually every Monday and I’m going to start next week with some things about the author and why I think that we can take him and what he has to say, seriously. Hope to see you then. Until then, God bless.
Part 2: Was Luke Telling the Truth?
The book of Acts is fascinating. It’s an eyewitness account of how Christianity expanded after the resurrection of Jesus. The players in the book can be lumped into four basic groups of people. There’s the Jesus followers a.k.a. the church, a group of people that started at one hundred and twenty, give or take, tasked with carrying on a movement that Jesus started, there are numerous Jewish antagonists who, throughout the book, would seek to suppress this movement, there is a sizable group of Jewish men and women who would join this movement and an extremely large group of non-Jewish people, the Gentiles, who were introduced to this movement, some accepting it as truth and others turning it down. Another way of putting it perhaps, it’s an eyewitness account of how the early followers of Jesus were given a mission and how they went about completing their part in that mission during their lifetime.
The account begins with Jesus meeting with His followers on the last day that He was on earth. Luke, the author of Acts recorded the events like this. “On one occasion while He (Jesus) was eating with them, He gave them this command. ‘Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift that my father promised, which you heard me speak about. For John baptized you with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’”
“And they gathered around Him and asked Him, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’”
“He said to them, ‘It’s not for you to know the times or the dates the Father has set by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.’”
“After He said this, He was taken before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.”
“They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said. ‘Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken from you to heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.’”
Now, before we get started, something that I think that we need to do is to address some credibility issues here. All reputable historians, both Christian and non-Christian, are in agreement that the writer of Acts is Luke, a Gentile doctor and an historian and much of the evidence would indicate that he wrote this account between 60 and 62 AD. So, for any skeptics reading this, let’s address the elephant in the room. Just because Luke wrote the book, how do we know that Luke was telling the truth? That is a valid question by the way, because some of the things that he talks about as if they were historical fact, Jesus rising from the dead and then being taken up into heaven, for example, is stuff that is better suited for a Marvel movie, good movies but fiction none-the-less. And yet…. Luke would have us believe that what is written is what actually happened.
Personally, in part because of my background, I’ll own my bias here, I believe Luke and I am greatly indebted to J. Warner Wallace and other apologists like him for the proof that validated what I was taught growing up. Allow me to share a bit of my reasoning behind why I have come to that conclusion. I will warn you up front that it might appear that I am meandering but please hang with me. I will bring it to a logical conclusion, I promise. For starters, the internal evidence, that is the evidence written within the text itself, points to Luke’s account being written before 62 AD. For me, what’s compelling here is not what is written incidentally, but rather, what is not. Luke is a stickler for details and he gets stuff right again and again throughout Acts. Keeping that in mind, in Acts, Luke records the deaths of two martyrs, Stephen, an early leader in the church, and James, the brother of the Apostle John. We aren’t entirely sure when Stephen was martyred other than it was before James, and James was martyred in 44 AD. With that chronology in mind, consider this, as far as being major players in the overall story of Acts, Stephen and James aren’t major players at all. But Luke records their deaths, which would be consistent with his style and his accuracy and his habit of paying attention to detail.
Now here’s where things get interesting though. Three of the most major players in the early church, men who are talked about extensively in Acts, James, the half-brother of Jesus, the Apostle Peter one of the three closest disciples to Jesus and the Apostle Paul, were also martyred albeit twentyish years later. James was martyred in 62AD, Paul was beheaded by Nero sometime between 64 and 67 AD and Peter was martyred in 64 AD. Concerning the deaths of these three however Luke doesn’t talk about them in Acts. Theirs deaths aren’t even hinted at and that has to raise eyebrows just a bit. Luke, the stickler for details, records the martyrdom of two minor players but leaves these three major players out? That’s not the only thing that Luke omits either. In addition, there’s no mention of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70AD, a huge event in Jewish history and, incidentally, an event that Jesus predicted while he was on earth. Now my reason for bringing all of this up is not to give a history lesson but rather to present a compelling argument that Luke was telling the truth when he wrote Acts. As I said in the previous paragraph, Luke, when writing Acts, didn’t miss stuff and so, for him to miss major events such as Paul’s death, James’ death, the destruction of the Jewish temple, would be highly irregular unless…the events hadn’t happened yet when he wrote Acts. In light of Luke’s character and style, it’s the most compelling logical explanation. Luke couldn’t write about things that hadn’t happened yet.
Now here’s why all this is important. As we examine and evaluate what Luke recorded, including the miracles and what not, if Luke wrote Acts before 62AD then that means that most of what he wrote about, the events that he recorded, happened within a thirty-year span and one could logically conclude that many of the people who he wrote about in Acts were still alive when he wrote it and could corroborate his story. In other words, if Luke got something wrong, if he was just making things up, embellishing stories a bit…or a lot, there were people who were actually there at these events he recorded and were still alive at the time when he wrote Acts, and these people could have, and probably would have, called him on it if things didn’t happen like he said they did.
So, what does that mean for us living in the 21st century? It’s kind of a game changer actually. It means that as readers, we have to consider that there’s a strong argument that the events that Luke describes in Acts, including the miracles, actually happened in the way that Luke said that they did. It also means that if miracles happened back then, why not now? Questions come to mind like what did those people back then know that we may have forgotten? What were those people doing back then that we aren’t doing today? Those two questions are especially important because it’s one thing to write a story and have things work out but it’s quite another matter to write non-fiction and have things work out as they did… And yet, that’s what Luke is saying happened so, especially as Jesus followers, we need to sit up and pay attention when we read Acts because, frankly, those people were on to something.
You know, I should probably give you a bit of a backstory on how I personally landed in Acts. In a nutshell, last fall, I had become bored with the Bible. I knew it was true. I knew that it was the inspired Word of God, God’s thoughts on paper, but I was having a hard time just getting interested in reading it and staying focused when I did. Part of it was that I had spent so much time in the last three years in the Gospel accounts that it felt like I was just rehashing what I had read so many times before. So, what I did in December is I took a new paperback Bible that had never been written in and I just started reading Acts. I used the Bible as a workbook almost and I just started underlining and jotting notes about things that I was reading that just looked interesting to me. I wasn’t looking for theological truth per se, although I knew that I would see it, I was just looking at things inquisitively and I was asking a lot of questions as I went. I would often ask the question, “I wonder why they did it that way?” I was also looking for patterns of behavior, especially as I got into the book. I just wanted to regain my interest in what the Bible had to say and this series is the fruit of that process.
My application point today is simple. Maybe you’re reading this and as I have given you the backstory of how I got here, you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s where I am right now.” Well, my friend, you aren’t alone. We’ve all been there and if you are looking for ways to snap out of it, perhaps you want to try what I tried. Just pick a book in the Bible. (If you’re new to Christianity, I’d advise you to stay out of Revelation because the imagery is really trippy in that book. Ezekiel can be kind of a head trip too, so stay away from that one also.) Have a notebook beside you and just jot down stuff that interests you or causes you to ask questions. And pray like this, “God, I just want to get interested in what you have to say again. Please help me.”
Or maybe you’ve never done anything like this before and you aren’t even sure about this Jesus person at all. Try it with the Gospels, the first four books in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, or Acts, the next book for all that matters, and do the same thing. Just read it and jot down what strikes you as interesting or different or whatever. Write down questions and ask God to show up as you do it. And, regardless of whichever category you fall into here, don’t be in a hurry to get the book done, you aren’t on a schedule for this one. Just read it for you.
Now as far as this site goes and what I plan on doing with it, for the next several weeks I want to take a look at the first eleven verses of Acts and see what truth can be gleaned from it. Post days are typically Mondays. See you then.
For those of you reading this, if I have described things here that resonate with you and you want to talk, get a hold of me. Email me at [email protected].
Part 3: The Resurrection, Deal Maker or Deal Breaker
The Book of Acts begins with a slight overlap of where the Gospel of Luke concluded. In the first eleven verses, Luke tells how Jesus spoke to His followers and gave them their final instructions before He ascended into heaven. For those of you non-church attenders, let me fill you in on how church attenders usually approach this section of Acts. They have this annoying tendency to skip over the first seven verses and go right to verses eight and nine. Now granted, those verses are important, really important, but if you blow right by them, you miss some other equally important stuff so I want to slow down a bit. Read the first three verses.
“In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.”
Now to understand Acts, we need to fully grasp what Luke just said here. He just said that Jesus was dead and that He rose from the grave. Don’t get caught up and split hairs with the way that Luke used the term suffering because, Luke clearly talked about the crucifixion and that Jesus died as a result of crucifixion in the Gospel of Luke which he references here. When he uses the term suffering, Luke is definitely saying that Jesus died and what he’s referring to when he uses that word suffering is the emotional anguish and the physical pain of crucifixion. And then Luke talks about the resurrection and clearly states that Jesus rose from the grave and that He was alive after He died on a Roman cross. And folks, that’s where I want to camp today. I want to address the claim that Jesus rose from the grave because it’s the foundation for everything else written in the Book of Acts and for all of Christianity for all matters. In fact, here’s the deal, Christianity rises or falls with the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For any haters out there reading this, if you want to shut down Christianity forever, just prove that the resurrection never happened. Yeah, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is either the deal maker or it's the deal breaker. Disprove it and Acts, and Christianity for all that matters, is DOA. I’ll warn you though, if you take on this challenge and try, you wouldn’t be the first one to try and do it but no one in over 2000 years has succeeded and many who have taken on the challenge, after examining all of the evidence, have become convinced that the resurrection is true and have become Jesus followers in the process. So, let’s break it down.
Let’s start with the external evidence proving that Jesus actually did live and then die on the cross. Let’s begin with Josephus, a Jewish historian who witnessed the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Josephus wasn’t a Christian, but he wrote in his work that Jesus was executed by order of Pontius Pilate. Tacitus, a Roman historian and senator also wrote in his writings that Jesus was crucified by order of Pontius Pilate. Did they get it wrong? Not likely. They knew who they were dealing with. When it came to executions, the Romans were the masters of the craft. In fact, crucifixion was their brainchild. And, when it came to any execution by crucifixion, the Romans had a policy. Three coroners would examine the body and sign the death warrant attesting to the fact that the person in question was indeed dead. There’s no reason to believe that that isn’t what happened to Jesus.
To further support Luke’s claim that Jesus was crucified by the Romans, let’s move up to the 21st Century. Consider this quote by respected historian Bart Ehrman, an agnostic. “The crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans is one of the most secure historical facts we have about his life.” Then there’s Gerd Ludemann, an atheist New Testament scholar from Germany, “Jesus’ death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.”
The bottom line was this. Jesus died and everyone knew it. The early church did not face resistance when it claimed that Jesus had died, it’s when its members claimed that He had risen from the dead that the fireworks started and Luke, made it clear from the get-go in Acts, that Jesus had risen from the dead. Taking Luke’s words at face value, what he said was that for forty days after that Easter Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus appeared to His followers and presented convincing proofs to them that He was alive. So, who are these people that John refers to?
One of the people was the Apostle John. He had a front row seat at the crucifixion. He admits in his gospel account that he was right there when Jesus took His final breath and apparently, he lingered at the cross for some time after Jesus had died. In his same account, John recorded that he saw a Roman soldier pierce Jesus’ side with a spear and that blood and water separated and flowed out of the wound. The medical term for what John saw was thoracocentesis, which is when the red blood cells after death separate from a clearer, lighter plasma. The bottom line, John saw Jesus die and he was one of the people who saw Jesus alive at various times for forty days afterwards.
Another person who Luke mentions as being there in Acts 1 was Mary, Jesus’ mother. Three of the four gospel accounts place her there at the foot of the cross when Jesus died and Luke puts her at the sight of the ascension, when he records that Jesus ascended to heaven. We can also include Mary Magdalene, another of the women who followed Jesus during His lifetime, in this discussion. Several of the gospel writers place Mary Magdalene at the scene of the cross and Luke places her at the scene of tomb both when Jesus’ body was placed there and afterwards, when it was empty. In addition, Matthew, Mark and John also record her actually seeing Jesus alive and physically touching Him on Easter morning. So, while not specifically naming her in Acts 1, Luke does make reference to Mary, the mother of Jesus and, “the women,” so it is safe to assume that Mary Magdalene was there too.
Then there was Peter. He also knew Jesus had risen as well. He saw the empty tomb that Easter morning and a short time later, he shared a meal with Jesus. For the record, dead people don’t eat meals. In fact, I’m not even sure that they like food because it’s really hard for them to digest. Coming back to Peter though, when it came to talking about seeing Jesus alive however, for the rest of his life, Peter wouldn’t shut up about it. In most of His sermons, his message was the same. Jesus had died but then He rose again.
And if we still need more proof, if we still need more eyewitness testimony, consider this statement that the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians. “Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles.” (1 Corinthians 15: 3 – 7) Scholars believe that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in 53 to 54 AD, about twenty years after Christ rose from the grave. And did you pick up on what he said about how many people saw Jesus alive after the crucifixion? Over 500 people in one place at one time. That’s a lot of people, and, according to Paul, many were still alive at the time when he wrote that letter and could corroborate his claim.
Folks, in terms of eyewitness evidence, that’s strong evidence and there’s a lot of it. And, in light of the fact that Jesus’ enemies at the time, people who had no qualms about shutting this resurrection story down, in fact, they wanted to and were willing to kill in order to suppress the story, the fact that they could never produce the body of Jesus, just makes Luke’s claim in Acts all that much more credible.
So, what does all of this mean to you and me? Without overthinking things, we have to make the same decision that the original readers of Luke’s account in Acts had to make when they read it. When it comes to Jesus being raised from the grave, we have to decide if we believe the eyewitness accounts or not and, in the same way that it was a serious matter for them, it’s a serious matter for us too.
Here’s what I mean. Timothy Keller wrote in his book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.”
Dr. Josh McDowell echoes this sentiment on his website as he fields the question of whether or not the resurrection really matters. “If Jesus didn’t rise, we have no foundation for our faith. If we’re gullibly basing our lives on a fairytale, we sure are wasting a lot of time trying to resemble a person who had the crazy idea He was God!”
These men and countless others are correct in their assessment of the resurrection and what we have to do with it. We have to decide whether or not we believe it or not and then, if we do, we then have to decide what we are going to do with the teachings of Jesus because, in terms of big deals in life, it’s a big deal. It means agreeing with God about His assessment of us that we can’t save ourselves and that we need a savior and Jesus is that savior. It means that we have to agree with Jesus’ statement in John 14:6 when He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father, except through me.” Yes, that’s an exclusive claim. Jesus claimed to be the only way to God. It means that we have to actually take Luke 9:23 – 24 seriously. “If anyone wishes to follow Me [as My disciple], he must deny himself [set aside selfish interests], and take up his cross daily [expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow Me [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me].”
That’s pretty heavy stuff but you know what? Since I brought up Luke 9:23, let me add verse 24 to the mix. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” We have a saying around my house. “Nobody’s getting out of here alive.” Well, guess what? Jesus did. If Luke is telling the truth, Jesus got out alive and He’s offering that same life to whoever will follow Him. Jesus is telling whoever will listen that there’s something else out there, that this isn’t all there is. Read the Gospels, read the rest of Acts, read Paul’s letters, read Revelation 21. What Jesus is saying in a nutshell, is that following Him, becoming His disciple, is worth it. But make no mistake about it. All of this hinges on one fundamental question. Is the resurrection of Jesus true or not? If it isn’t true, we can pretty much end this discussion but, if it is true, then we’re going to have to deal with it.
I’d like to close this article by telling the story of the conversion of a hard nosed atheist named Lee Strobel. Strobel was an investigative reporter who had earned his Master’s Degree from Yale Law School and had made a name for himself when he covered a class action lawsuit against the Ford Motor Company in 1980 involving Pintos and exploding gas tanks. From the outside looking in, he had it all together but then his world got thrown for a loop when his wife became a Christian. Frankly, Strobel thought that this might end their marriage but, the behavior changes that he saw in his wife, good changes in his opinion, caused him to investigate Christianity. He investigated it with the same passion that he investigated everything else professionally and, after 18 months, he came to the conclusion that Christianity was true and became a Christian. In his own words, Strobel said this. “In short, I didn’t become a Christian because God promised I would have an even happier life than I had as an atheist. He never promised any such thing. Indeed, following him would inevitably bring divine demotions in the eyes of the world. Rather, I became a Christian because the evidence was so compelling that Jesus really is the one-and-only Son of God who proved his divinity by rising from the dead. That meant following him was the most rational and logical step I could possibly take.” Another way to put it might be like this. Strobel didn’t become a Christian because his life was a mess, it wasn’t. Strobel became a Christian because he came to the conclusion that Christianity was true.
Maybe that’s where you are. Maybe your life isn’t a mess. Maybe, in your opinion and the opinion of others, it’s good without Jesus in it. But what if all of this stuff about Jesus is true? What if he really did rise from the dead and His assessment of all of us is true? What are you going to do with it? My invitation to you friend is to examine Jesus, His claims, examine the eyewitness gospel accounts of his life and then make an intelligent decision about what you want to do with Him.
Next week I want to examine Jesus’ actual final instructions to His early followers and see what can be gleaned from what He said. I will tell you, those instructions are eye opening and, especially for the American church, it’s a must study because some of our underlying cultural expectations of what we expect following Jesus to look like, don’t add up with the mission statement that He gave. See you next week.
Part 4: Following Jesus was Career Suicide
One of the things that jumped out at me as I began to read Acts and take notes, was what following Jesus cost His original 120 followers. Today, when we think of Christianity, even though the general mood within the United States has shifted in the past forty years, it’s still relatively easy to be a follower of Jesus. What? Maybe get snubbed occasionally? Maybe get stuck in Facebook jail or something? Lose a friend or two, and I’m not talking about if we’re being obnoxious and deserve it, I mean just on general principle. I mean, let’s be honest. It doesn’t cost us all that much, especially when one considers what Christians in other parts of the world experience. It wasn’t like that for these 120 followers though and I think that we are greatly indebted to these people for the price they paid because much of the relative freedom that we enjoy are the fruits of their labors. For them, within several months after Jesus ascended into heaven, they would experience severe persecution. Many of them would be forced to leave their homes, many would lose their social support systems and for many, to follow Jesus could only be described as career suicide. Yet, they did it anyway. What’s even more amazing though is that they knew it was coming and they went in with their eyes wide open. The question that stood out to me was why. Why did they do this? What I want to do today is look at what Jesus said their mission was, what it would cost some of them and see if we can glean some answers for why they did it.
One of the final things that Jesus stressed to His followers was that they were to stay in Jerusalem because shortly they would receive the Holy Spirit that God the Father had promised to give them. This got them really excited for at least two reasons. In the first place, they were coming at this from an Old Testament frame of reference when the Holy Spirit was only given to specific people for special assignments. The Holy Spirit was given to the Moseses and the Elijahs of the world, not ordinary people, so, if they were to receive the Holy Spirit, that must mean that they were being given a really important assignment, and, in their minds, that could only mean one thing. Jesus was going to set up His kingdom. The apostles kept pounding Him with this question. “Lord, is this the time that you will free Israel and restore our kingdom?” Their logic was simple. Jesus would free Israel, set up His kingdom and then, well, He’d need people to administrate this kingdom and He would probably use them. Talk about career enhancement.
Yeah, about that. Listen to Jesus’ answer. “The Father alone has the authority to set those times and dates, it’s not for you to know,” was how He fielded that question. In other words, not only did Jesus say no, but He didn’t even know when He would set up that kind of kingdom. Only God the Father knew that date. However, just because He wasn’t setting up the political kingdom at this time, that didn’t mean that they didn’t have a job to do. “But you will receive power,” He continued, “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the very ends of the earth.”
So, what exactly was it that Jesus told them? First, they were promised that they would receive power. Now the Greek word for power is dunamai, the root word that we get the English word dynamite from, you know, the one step above the word to describe the fireworks that my neighbor set off in his back yard on July 2nd a few years ago. (Don’t ask me what he set off. All I know is that it startled Dianna and I, rattled the windows on my house, it was heard for miles, and it was enough to make social media in Bothell, Kirkland and Woodinville blow up for four hours after he did it. The general consensus was something about bombs and hooligans and somebody needs to get hauled off to jail…hey, I was just reading the comments. I didn’t contribute.)
Now while I suppose that dynamite might be a good description for the Holy Spirit’s power, I’m not sure that it’s the best description because there’s another English word that also uses dunamai as its root word. That’s the English word, dynamo. That’s the power generating mechanism that dams use to generate hydroelectric power. For any Washingtonians reading this, just think in terms of the Columbia River and you’ll get a good feel for the power of dynamos. There are 18 dams on the Columbia River and its tributary the Snake River and the largest of the dams, Grand Coulee Dam, on average generates enough hydroelectric power to supply eight western states and parts of Canada. That’s a lot of power and it’s constant power. That’s probably a better analogy to describe the power that the early church received. Dynamo’s power is infinitely broader and infinitely more constant than dynamite and that was the kind of power that Jesus promised His followers.
It’s a good thing they were getting the Holy Spirit, because they were going to need Him. Here came the mission. “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” For most of us, when we hear the word, witnesses, we think of a courtroom scene where a person is put under oath and then testifies as to what they have seen or heard which is part of what those people would do. However, there was more to this than just that aspect. In reality, that’s only half of what Jesus was telling them they would do. The Greek word translated as “witnesses,” is martus and while yes, the word can be used to describe a witness in a courtroom, it’s also the same word that we get the English word martyr from. In fact, depending on the context, the word can be translated as martyr and, probably based on how many of the people in His original audience died, that’s probably what he had in mind.
Here’s what I mean. Of the original eleven apostles listening to him, ten would die martyrs’ deaths,. They would be crucified, beheaded, impaled with spears, etc... Only the Apostle John would die of natural causes but he would die in exile on the island of Patmos. Other early followers would also share the Apostle’s fate. They would be forced from their homes and imprisoned. As Americans, we need to understand something here. For these early followers, this was not a “follow Jesus and live the American dream” kind of thing, this was “follow Jesus, leave your livelihoods behind, take up your cross and die”. There was a new operating agenda in their lives now, and, for most of them, to follow Jesus was the end of their careers as they knew it. Half of the Apostles, for example, were fishermen. They could have supported themselves comfortably on the Sea of Galilee. They never fished again. They followed Jesus instead. One of these fishermen for example, Peter, would live years as a fugitive from the law thanks to being broken out of a Roman prison by an angel and in the end, he’d be crucified. These people knew what they were signing up for, and they did it willingly with no regrets. Like I said, the question that jumps out at me is, why?
The obvious reason, I suppose, is the fact that Jesus rose from the grave. They’d seen Him dead, and now, He was alive. He had taken on the ultimate enemy of the human race and won. And He promised to share this victory with anyone who would follow Him. And, for whatever reason, He entrusted them with the mission of spreading the news of this kingdom.
Another reason too I suppose, is that in Jesus they saw a love, a self-sacrificing love, that they had never seen before and it was contagious. They were beginning to understand that Jesus was the promised Messiah and that He had paid the price for the rebellion of the world. One of the points that Philip Yancey, in his book, Disappointment With God, brings out is that as he read and studied the Bible that there was a particular mood swing in the Acts that altered the direction of the rest of the Bible. “Gone,” he said, “was the moral outrage of Job, or the lamentations of Jeremiah,” for example. What it was replaced with was a hope that had never existed before, at least not like now. “The Apostles,” Yancey wrote, “were convinced that Jesus had changed the world forever.” They may not have understood it entirely, and they had to grow in that understanding, but they knew this much, they were all in, whatever the cost.
I think that there might have been one other reason as well. When it came to coming to God, Jesus leveled the playing field. Status and religiosity meant nothing to Him. In fact, His harshest words in the Gospels were reserved for those who practiced religious hypocrisy. That might be something for those of us who have been in church all of our lives to pay special attention to, and heed. He elevated the status of women, something that we take for granted today but was radical back then. He allowed a prostitute to anoint Him with costly perfume. He loved children and granted them access to Himself. No rabbi ever did that… well, except for Jesus. And he chose the uneducated, fishermen and a Roman tax collector, to be His disciples. He even pardoned, when he was hanging on a cross, a criminal who was being executed right alongside of Him. When everyone was looking at the outward appearances Jesus was looking straight into the hearts of people and choosing whoever wanted to come to Him on His terms, to be His followers. The bottom line, no one was like Jesus, nor would anyone ever be like Jesus. He was unique, and, regardless of the cost, these early followers of His were all in.
You know, as I think about it, the truth of the resurrection of Jesus is as true today as it was back then and terrain leading up to the cross where forgiveness of all of our rebellion can be found, is as level today as it was back then. The early followers of Jesus didn’t have anything to offer Him really except repentant spirits and willing hearts. All they had to offer Him was a willingness to buy into His agenda and a willingness to make Him Lord and allow Him to change their lives. And all of them needed their lives changed. Peter, for example, was a work in progress. He had to change his attitude toward Gentiles and it took probably twenty years for that to happen. Take another example, Paul’s letters. You look at Paul’s letters to the early churches, and there were some pretty sketchy people who came to Jesus and ended up having their lives changed. The thing is though, if a person would repent of their rebellion, place their faith in Jesus and choose to follow Him, there was a place in the kingdom for them.
So, what does this have to do with you and me? Maybe this is where you are today. Your life is okay but maybe you’re looking at Jesus, and you’ve started looking at the facts regarding Him and you’re coming to the conclusion that the evidence points to the fact that He’s the real deal and that He’s alive and the only logical thing left to do is to take the next step and follow Him. There’s a place at the table for you, trust me. Or maybe, you’re on the other end of this spectrum. Your life is, well, it’s not working for you at all and you’re getting this conviction that following Jesus is the only way that it’s gonna work. If you’ll place your faith in Him and follow, there’s a place for you in the kingdom. But what about all of the stuff that you’ve done? Stuff that you’re even embarrassed to admit that you did? Jesus already paid for it on the cross. Consider it like this. The offer on the table that God has put in front of you is that if you will place your faith in Jesus and follow Him for the rest of your life, that God will forgive you of every rebellious act that you have ever done against Him and everyone else in the world. It’s not a parole offer, it’s a 100% pardon. So, here’s the question for you. If God is crazy enough to put that offer on the table, are you really going to be crazy enough to turn Him down or are you going to make the best decision of your life and take the deal? No one can make that decision for you. It’s entirely on you.
I will tell you one thing though, if you do choose to follow Jesus, He will change your life. Speaking from firsthand experience, He will put you in positions where you are going to have to change your natural inclinations if you’re responding to tough situations in ways so that your response looks like His. Is it hard? Yes, but go back to what He promised the early followers, “and you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Remember that dynamo kind of power? You get the same thing. This is going to sound religious to you maybe, but if you choose to follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the triune God, enters you forever and starts to change you and empower you so that you look like Jesus. I know that it’s true from personal experience. This past week Dianna and I celebrated our 43rd wedding anniversary. We have an awesome marriage but you know, it wasn’t always like that. In fact, it’s varied from an okay marriage to an, “I didn’t sign up for this crap! I want out.” (I know, yes, we did sign up for that crap. Something about for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse…) Anyway, about twenty years ago, I made a decision not to be a religious rule follower but actually an all in Jesus follower. About that time too, Dianna went from being a fan of Jesus to actually following Him as well and our lives changed along with our marriage. Today, we have one of those marriages that people would kill for and Jesus did it.
So, how do you make that decision? If you really want to, just pray a prayer something like, “God, I’m through rebelling against you. I know that I’ve offended you and caused a separation between us. It’s all my fault and today I want to end that. I know that Jesus died for me and that the offer on the table is for me to place my faith in Jesus and apply His death to my rebellion. I want to take you up on that offer and accept Jesus as my savior and follow Him for the rest of my life. There’s a whole lot of things that I don’t understand but I am willing to trust You anyway. Thank you for forgiving me in the same way that you forgave those early followers of Jesus. God, I’m all in. In Jesus name, amen.”
Next week, I’m going to take a look at the last thing that happened when Jesus gave His followers their final instructions and see how that applies to us in the 21st century. There’re definitely some application points there and some things to think about. See you then.
Copyright 2023 by Sam Roach
Part 5: Jesus is Coming Back…You Know That Don’t You?
Jesus is coming back; you know that don’t you? Yeah, physically, in the flesh, He’s coming back. I know, it sounds wild but, according to Luke, it is true. Now, if you’re a skeptic reading this and you’re rolling your eyes about now, I honestly can’t fault you all that much because frankly, it’s not like His followers exactly take this fact all that seriously, at least they don’t live like it. But, regardless of how Jesus’ followers live today, the way that Luke tells it, it’s gonna happen.
According to Luke’s sources, after Jesus told His followers that they would be witnesses of Him from Jerusalem all the way to the farthest reaches of the earth, He was elevated before their eyes and a cloud hid Him from their sight. Naturally they were just staring into the sky intently, who wouldn’t be after all, when two men, dressed in white robes came upon them. “Men of Galilee,” they said. “Why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven but someday, He will return in the same way in which you saw Him go.”
So, there you have it in Acts. According to Luke, based on the testimonies of the people he interviewed, two angels told His followers that Jesus is coming back. I believe that testimony by the way but I’m also personally convinced that it’s one of those things that none of us take seriously enough. If we did, I think that we would live our lives differently.
Now, there’s probably a variety of reasons for why we don’t take this seriously enough. First, for those of us who grew up in the church, it’s one of those things that we’re taught before we even start school and it’s repeated so many times that we’ve kind of grown numb to it. It’s not that we don’t believe it, we do. It’s just that we’ve become so familiarized with it that we don’t allow it to influence how we live our daily lives and that, for the record, is a mistake.
The second reason, and skeptics, I appreciate your doubts here because, I get it, it just sounds so farfetched. It sounds like a scene out of a Marvel movie. I mean, who ascends into heaven? It defies the law of gravity and yet, if we are going to blow it off as if it were fiction, we have to call a lot of people liars. Peter was there, he saw Jesus ascend into heaven and so did the Apostle John. Matthew was there too, as was James, Jesus’ half-brother. And all of these men were still alive when Luke wrote Acts and if Luke wasn’t telling it like it was, you can bet your next four paychecks that they would have called him on it.
Then there’s the third reason why we don’t tend to take it seriously enough perhaps and this is a point that all sides, Christians and skeptics and everyone else in between would agree on. It’s that it’s just been so long. I mean, it’s been darn near 2000 years since He left and He’s still not back. To that point, I would say, consider who you’re dealing with. You’re dealing with Jesus. He’s God. And that means that He’s not on anyone’s schedule except His own. He’s not on a curfew, that’s for sure and incidentally, it’s not the first time that He’s been allegedly late. Think back to prophesies relating to His first coming. The first mention of His first coming was in the Garden of Eden when humanity first rebelled against Him. And after that there were prophesies about the Messiah that were scattered throughout the entire Old Testament. How long was it between the first prophesy relating to the coming Messiah, Jesus, and when He actually came? I have no idea except that it was a lot longer than 2000 years. And, at the time when Jesus was actually born, there were a lot of theories regarding what He would be like and frankly, there was a lot of confusion really. In fact, there were members of the Jewish community who were contemporaries of Jesus who didn’t think that the Messiah would actually be a real person…because it had been so long and the circumstances had changed.
And yet, on God’s calendar, not theirs, Jesus came. The point here is, just because it’s been a long time doesn’t mean that it won’t happen because, considering His track record throughout history, Jesus is operating on His schedule. Time is not the issue here but rather the character of the one who made the promise. If Jesus said that He’s coming back a second time, which He did say throughout His ministry, you can take it to the bank.
So, what will this return of Jesus, this Second Coming as it’s referred to in some church circles, look like? Five times in the New Testament the event is described as coming like a thief in the night. John quoted Jesus saying it in Revelation, Paul described it that way twice in his letters, Peter described it that way in 1st Peter and Matthew quoted Jesus describing it that way in his Gospel account. Ever had your catalytic converter stolen? The thieves don’t announce that they’re coming when they do that. It’s an in, out and done deal. When Jesus comes back, that’s apparently how it will be.
It will also be a public event according to John’s prophesy in Revelation 1:7. “Every eye will see Him,” is how the verse is actually written. That’s not farfetched at all. We have the technology right now to make that happen so I won’t belabor that point here. It will be public and every news media platform on the planet will be carry it and it will supersede any agenda that was scheduled for that day. Remember how 911 stopped everything in the United States dead in it’s tracks? This event will be like that except it will be on maximum steroids. It will be that public.
It’s also important, I think, to think about what Jesus will do when He returns a second time. Remember how the Apostles asked Him in Acts 1:4 after He instructed them to wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon them if it was at that time that He would be setting up His kingdom and He told them that it was not for them to know the time? Well, when He returns a second time, the answer to that question will be yes. And here’s something that we need to pay attention to. One of the places where this event is described is Revelation 19 and the description is sobering. John, in his vision, describes the heavens opening and Jesus coming back to earth riding a white horse. In context, during this time period when John wrote this, his original hearers would have interpreted this one way. The kings that did this when they entered into a conquered city were coming into a city as royalty and a conquering king. They were not negotiating terms of surrender; they were dictating them.
Referring to Jesus, “with justice He judges and wages war.” He’s described as leading armies of heaven and He’s also described as ruling the nations with an iron scepter. There’s other imagery and descriptions as well in this chapter and, frankly, if it wasn’t for the character of God, it would be absolutely terrifying. Here’s the point though. Jesus is coming back to set up His kingdom and He won’t be negotiating and compromising, He will be dictating terms. He will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords and, as far as existing agendas are concerned, to quote Dr. Tony Evans, “Jesus isn’t coming back to take sides, He’s coming back to take over.” He’s coming back to reclaim what is rightfully His and the only operating agenda in play will be His. Think of it like this. In the Garden of Eden, God, in the 2nd person of the Trinity, Jesus, created the world and set mankind up as administrators of this earth and we leased it out to Satan and through people buying into his selfish and rebellious agenda, he’s been running it into the ground ever since. Here’s the thing though. All leases have a termination date and, in the case of the earth, when Jesus returns, the lease to Satan is up and it won’t be renewed.
So, what do we do with this? What does this mean for us? There’s one last thing to consider as Jesus described His second coming. He talked about His kingdom in parables and stories throughout the Gospels and one of the predominate themes is to be ready for when He returns. It’s to be living expectantly for that return and by that, I mean to be living our lives in such a way that if Jesus were to return today that we wouldn’t be embarrassed to give an account for how we are living. Based on what Jesus said in the Gospels, it means loving God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Paul said it like this in his letter to the Philippians. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourself.” (Philippians 2:3)
Guys, I am not just spouting off here. One of the times when Jesus was talking about His kingdom, He described how He would differentiate between people who followed Him and people who didn’t and He told it like this. To the people He accepted into His kingdom, He said this. “When I was hungry, you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” And when asked by those He was talking to, those He accepted, when did they do that to Him, here was His answer. “In the same way that you did it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” And, to those people He rejected, the criteria in the story were that they had done none of these things to the least of His brothers and sisters and therefore, they had not done it to Him.
This is just my opinion but if you want to get specific, based on what Jesus said, one of the ways to live in such a way that we are prepared if He were to return today means loving the marginalized and vulnerable people in society. It means loving the poor, loving the immigrants regardless of their legal status. It means loving the people least able to defend themselves in society, the homeless, for example, and it means loving both the pregnant woman and the unborn, the latter probably being the most vulnerable of all. It means that when our political party or social circle of friends and associates, even our church perhaps, say one thing but Jesus says another, Jesus wins. It’s uncomfortable, I get it. But living in a way so that we are prepared for when Jesus returns means we find a way to get it done. Remember, Jesus never promised us that it would be easy. In fact, He said that it wouldn’t be. “If anyone would come after Me, to be My follower, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” (Luke 9:23)
In conclusion, Jesus is coming back, literally. It could be years, even centuries from now or it could happen before you have a chance to close the window on this website. No one knows for sure but the evidence says it’s fact and one of the messages that Jesus pounded home is that we had better be ready for it. For any skeptics out there who are asking, what evidence? I point you to the resurrection. Jesus rose from the grave, proving once and for all that He is God and then He said He’s coming back. Skeptics, if you want to shut this down, disprove the resurrection.
Before I wrap things up today, I’d like to bring up one last point. Going back to that white stallion that Jesus will be riding on when He comes back to earth, according to Scripture, He will be touching down outside of Jerusalem and then He will ride into Jerusalem. For the record, that won’t be the first time that He will have ridden into Jerusalem on a horse like animal. The first time that He did it was the Sunday before Easter. The difference then was that on that day He rode in on a donkey and the symbolism is significant. At the time when the New Testament was being written, when conquering kings would ride into a city, if they came in on a stallion, they would be coming in as a no-nonsense ruler imposing their will but, if they came in on a donkey, they were coming in peace and it would be a much gentler rule. The ruler was coming in to demonstrate his meekness, his humility, his power under control. Don’t misunderstand me now, the conquering king on a donkey was still the one calling the shots, he was just promising a gentler rule and that definitely was what Jesus is promising to all who would and still will follow Him. He’s offering forgiveness, a complete pardon for every wrong thing that we have ever done. Matthew records Him as saying to people who would accept His leadership, “My load is easy and my burden is light.”
Look, comparing what is written in Revelation 19 with the first time that He entered Jerusalem on a donkey, I can tell you this much, Jesus would much prefer to be the leader for the world coming on a donkey than the ruler who comes in on a stallion and rules it with an iron scepter. When the nation of Israel rejected Him the first time, He wept for that nation because He knew what was coming. He knew what the Romans were going to do to that nation some forty years later and, although Scripture doesn’t specifically carry it out any further than that, He probably also saw what was coming for the rest of the world in the interim between then and when He would finally set up His kingdom. Seriously, He would much rather be a king willingly followed than He would be one who imposes His kingdom on people but make no mistake about it, when Jesus comes back, He will set up His kingdom, His agenda will be the operating agenda for the world, and He will have no rivals.
So, how do we follow Jesus? If we are already followers, I think every day is a conscious surrender to His leadership in our daily affairs. It’s praying prayers like, “God, there is only one God in this world and you are Him, not me. Empower me today so that I can live in such a way that I am living in cooperation with the way that You want me to and not in either active or passive resistance against You.” Another way that I commonly pray is like this. “God, please show me the things in my life that offend You so that I can stop doing them out of love for You.”
If you have never actually made a decision to follow Jesus before but you would like to, perhaps praying a prayer like this makes sense to you. “God, for all practical purposes, I have rejected Your right to rule in my life for as long as I can remember. Maybe by society’s standards I haven’t been a bad person but You and I both know that I have done things that are just wrong, that I haven’t been able to obey my own moral code perfectly much less Yours. You and I both know that I have rebelled against You either actively or passively all of my life. You and I both know that when confronted with the choice of doing the right thing, the thing that You want me to do as opposed to doing things that I want to do, that I have chosen to do the things that I want to do regardless of what You said. I have offended you and I have caused the separation that is between us. I want to change that starting today because the consequences of my actions have serious ramifications. They were what sent Jesus to the cross to die. Thank you for sending Jesus to die for me because You loved me that much and I believe that You raised Him from the grave, accepting that payment. I want to accept Jesus as my Savior and follow Him for the rest of my life starting right now. In Jesus name. Amen”
If you prayed that prayer just now, you know what? That king that rode into Jerusalem on a donkey is now your leader. He’s forgiven you and He’s going to empower you every day to do the right thing as you learn to live like He wants you to live. Also, if you just prayed that prayer and you are wondering how do you get started following Jesus, email me at [email protected], I’d love to talk to you.
Next week I want to spend some time looking at an event that happened several weeks after Jesus ascended into heaven when the Holy Spirit actually came and entered these people out of a lack of a better word for it. For skeptics, I would like to give you some things to think about that might answer some of your doubts and questions. For Christians, I want to show you some things about God that you probably haven’t thought about in some time. See you then.
According to Luke’s sources, after Jesus told His followers that they would be witnesses of Him from Jerusalem all the way to the farthest reaches of the earth, He was elevated before their eyes and a cloud hid Him from their sight. Naturally they were just staring into the sky intently, who wouldn’t be after all, when two men, dressed in white robes came upon them. “Men of Galilee,” they said. “Why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven but someday, He will return in the same way in which you saw Him go.”
So, there you have it in Acts. According to Luke, based on the testimonies of the people he interviewed, two angels told His followers that Jesus is coming back. I believe that testimony by the way but I’m also personally convinced that it’s one of those things that none of us take seriously enough. If we did, I think that we would live our lives differently.
Now, there’s probably a variety of reasons for why we don’t take this seriously enough. First, for those of us who grew up in the church, it’s one of those things that we’re taught before we even start school and it’s repeated so many times that we’ve kind of grown numb to it. It’s not that we don’t believe it, we do. It’s just that we’ve become so familiarized with it that we don’t allow it to influence how we live our daily lives and that, for the record, is a mistake.
The second reason, and skeptics, I appreciate your doubts here because, I get it, it just sounds so farfetched. It sounds like a scene out of a Marvel movie. I mean, who ascends into heaven? It defies the law of gravity and yet, if we are going to blow it off as if it were fiction, we have to call a lot of people liars. Peter was there, he saw Jesus ascend into heaven and so did the Apostle John. Matthew was there too, as was James, Jesus’ half-brother. And all of these men were still alive when Luke wrote Acts and if Luke wasn’t telling it like it was, you can bet your next four paychecks that they would have called him on it.
Then there’s the third reason why we don’t tend to take it seriously enough perhaps and this is a point that all sides, Christians and skeptics and everyone else in between would agree on. It’s that it’s just been so long. I mean, it’s been darn near 2000 years since He left and He’s still not back. To that point, I would say, consider who you’re dealing with. You’re dealing with Jesus. He’s God. And that means that He’s not on anyone’s schedule except His own. He’s not on a curfew, that’s for sure and incidentally, it’s not the first time that He’s been allegedly late. Think back to prophesies relating to His first coming. The first mention of His first coming was in the Garden of Eden when humanity first rebelled against Him. And after that there were prophesies about the Messiah that were scattered throughout the entire Old Testament. How long was it between the first prophesy relating to the coming Messiah, Jesus, and when He actually came? I have no idea except that it was a lot longer than 2000 years. And, at the time when Jesus was actually born, there were a lot of theories regarding what He would be like and frankly, there was a lot of confusion really. In fact, there were members of the Jewish community who were contemporaries of Jesus who didn’t think that the Messiah would actually be a real person…because it had been so long and the circumstances had changed.
And yet, on God’s calendar, not theirs, Jesus came. The point here is, just because it’s been a long time doesn’t mean that it won’t happen because, considering His track record throughout history, Jesus is operating on His schedule. Time is not the issue here but rather the character of the one who made the promise. If Jesus said that He’s coming back a second time, which He did say throughout His ministry, you can take it to the bank.
So, what will this return of Jesus, this Second Coming as it’s referred to in some church circles, look like? Five times in the New Testament the event is described as coming like a thief in the night. John quoted Jesus saying it in Revelation, Paul described it that way twice in his letters, Peter described it that way in 1st Peter and Matthew quoted Jesus describing it that way in his Gospel account. Ever had your catalytic converter stolen? The thieves don’t announce that they’re coming when they do that. It’s an in, out and done deal. When Jesus comes back, that’s apparently how it will be.
It will also be a public event according to John’s prophesy in Revelation 1:7. “Every eye will see Him,” is how the verse is actually written. That’s not farfetched at all. We have the technology right now to make that happen so I won’t belabor that point here. It will be public and every news media platform on the planet will be carry it and it will supersede any agenda that was scheduled for that day. Remember how 911 stopped everything in the United States dead in it’s tracks? This event will be like that except it will be on maximum steroids. It will be that public.
It’s also important, I think, to think about what Jesus will do when He returns a second time. Remember how the Apostles asked Him in Acts 1:4 after He instructed them to wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon them if it was at that time that He would be setting up His kingdom and He told them that it was not for them to know the time? Well, when He returns a second time, the answer to that question will be yes. And here’s something that we need to pay attention to. One of the places where this event is described is Revelation 19 and the description is sobering. John, in his vision, describes the heavens opening and Jesus coming back to earth riding a white horse. In context, during this time period when John wrote this, his original hearers would have interpreted this one way. The kings that did this when they entered into a conquered city were coming into a city as royalty and a conquering king. They were not negotiating terms of surrender; they were dictating them.
Referring to Jesus, “with justice He judges and wages war.” He’s described as leading armies of heaven and He’s also described as ruling the nations with an iron scepter. There’s other imagery and descriptions as well in this chapter and, frankly, if it wasn’t for the character of God, it would be absolutely terrifying. Here’s the point though. Jesus is coming back to set up His kingdom and He won’t be negotiating and compromising, He will be dictating terms. He will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords and, as far as existing agendas are concerned, to quote Dr. Tony Evans, “Jesus isn’t coming back to take sides, He’s coming back to take over.” He’s coming back to reclaim what is rightfully His and the only operating agenda in play will be His. Think of it like this. In the Garden of Eden, God, in the 2nd person of the Trinity, Jesus, created the world and set mankind up as administrators of this earth and we leased it out to Satan and through people buying into his selfish and rebellious agenda, he’s been running it into the ground ever since. Here’s the thing though. All leases have a termination date and, in the case of the earth, when Jesus returns, the lease to Satan is up and it won’t be renewed.
So, what do we do with this? What does this mean for us? There’s one last thing to consider as Jesus described His second coming. He talked about His kingdom in parables and stories throughout the Gospels and one of the predominate themes is to be ready for when He returns. It’s to be living expectantly for that return and by that, I mean to be living our lives in such a way that if Jesus were to return today that we wouldn’t be embarrassed to give an account for how we are living. Based on what Jesus said in the Gospels, it means loving God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Paul said it like this in his letter to the Philippians. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourself.” (Philippians 2:3)
Guys, I am not just spouting off here. One of the times when Jesus was talking about His kingdom, He described how He would differentiate between people who followed Him and people who didn’t and He told it like this. To the people He accepted into His kingdom, He said this. “When I was hungry, you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” And when asked by those He was talking to, those He accepted, when did they do that to Him, here was His answer. “In the same way that you did it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” And, to those people He rejected, the criteria in the story were that they had done none of these things to the least of His brothers and sisters and therefore, they had not done it to Him.
This is just my opinion but if you want to get specific, based on what Jesus said, one of the ways to live in such a way that we are prepared if He were to return today means loving the marginalized and vulnerable people in society. It means loving the poor, loving the immigrants regardless of their legal status. It means loving the people least able to defend themselves in society, the homeless, for example, and it means loving both the pregnant woman and the unborn, the latter probably being the most vulnerable of all. It means that when our political party or social circle of friends and associates, even our church perhaps, say one thing but Jesus says another, Jesus wins. It’s uncomfortable, I get it. But living in a way so that we are prepared for when Jesus returns means we find a way to get it done. Remember, Jesus never promised us that it would be easy. In fact, He said that it wouldn’t be. “If anyone would come after Me, to be My follower, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” (Luke 9:23)
In conclusion, Jesus is coming back, literally. It could be years, even centuries from now or it could happen before you have a chance to close the window on this website. No one knows for sure but the evidence says it’s fact and one of the messages that Jesus pounded home is that we had better be ready for it. For any skeptics out there who are asking, what evidence? I point you to the resurrection. Jesus rose from the grave, proving once and for all that He is God and then He said He’s coming back. Skeptics, if you want to shut this down, disprove the resurrection.
Before I wrap things up today, I’d like to bring up one last point. Going back to that white stallion that Jesus will be riding on when He comes back to earth, according to Scripture, He will be touching down outside of Jerusalem and then He will ride into Jerusalem. For the record, that won’t be the first time that He will have ridden into Jerusalem on a horse like animal. The first time that He did it was the Sunday before Easter. The difference then was that on that day He rode in on a donkey and the symbolism is significant. At the time when the New Testament was being written, when conquering kings would ride into a city, if they came in on a stallion, they would be coming in as a no-nonsense ruler imposing their will but, if they came in on a donkey, they were coming in peace and it would be a much gentler rule. The ruler was coming in to demonstrate his meekness, his humility, his power under control. Don’t misunderstand me now, the conquering king on a donkey was still the one calling the shots, he was just promising a gentler rule and that definitely was what Jesus is promising to all who would and still will follow Him. He’s offering forgiveness, a complete pardon for every wrong thing that we have ever done. Matthew records Him as saying to people who would accept His leadership, “My load is easy and my burden is light.”
Look, comparing what is written in Revelation 19 with the first time that He entered Jerusalem on a donkey, I can tell you this much, Jesus would much prefer to be the leader for the world coming on a donkey than the ruler who comes in on a stallion and rules it with an iron scepter. When the nation of Israel rejected Him the first time, He wept for that nation because He knew what was coming. He knew what the Romans were going to do to that nation some forty years later and, although Scripture doesn’t specifically carry it out any further than that, He probably also saw what was coming for the rest of the world in the interim between then and when He would finally set up His kingdom. Seriously, He would much rather be a king willingly followed than He would be one who imposes His kingdom on people but make no mistake about it, when Jesus comes back, He will set up His kingdom, His agenda will be the operating agenda for the world, and He will have no rivals.
So, how do we follow Jesus? If we are already followers, I think every day is a conscious surrender to His leadership in our daily affairs. It’s praying prayers like, “God, there is only one God in this world and you are Him, not me. Empower me today so that I can live in such a way that I am living in cooperation with the way that You want me to and not in either active or passive resistance against You.” Another way that I commonly pray is like this. “God, please show me the things in my life that offend You so that I can stop doing them out of love for You.”
If you have never actually made a decision to follow Jesus before but you would like to, perhaps praying a prayer like this makes sense to you. “God, for all practical purposes, I have rejected Your right to rule in my life for as long as I can remember. Maybe by society’s standards I haven’t been a bad person but You and I both know that I have done things that are just wrong, that I haven’t been able to obey my own moral code perfectly much less Yours. You and I both know that I have rebelled against You either actively or passively all of my life. You and I both know that when confronted with the choice of doing the right thing, the thing that You want me to do as opposed to doing things that I want to do, that I have chosen to do the things that I want to do regardless of what You said. I have offended you and I have caused the separation that is between us. I want to change that starting today because the consequences of my actions have serious ramifications. They were what sent Jesus to the cross to die. Thank you for sending Jesus to die for me because You loved me that much and I believe that You raised Him from the grave, accepting that payment. I want to accept Jesus as my Savior and follow Him for the rest of my life starting right now. In Jesus name. Amen”
If you prayed that prayer just now, you know what? That king that rode into Jerusalem on a donkey is now your leader. He’s forgiven you and He’s going to empower you every day to do the right thing as you learn to live like He wants you to live. Also, if you just prayed that prayer and you are wondering how do you get started following Jesus, email me at [email protected], I’d love to talk to you.
Next week I want to spend some time looking at an event that happened several weeks after Jesus ascended into heaven when the Holy Spirit actually came and entered these people out of a lack of a better word for it. For skeptics, I would like to give you some things to think about that might answer some of your doubts and questions. For Christians, I want to show you some things about God that you probably haven’t thought about in some time. See you then.
Part 6: Pentecost, the Day that God Showed Up Big
Jerusalem was bustling that day. It was Pentecost, an important Jewish feast, and the city was crowded. The normal population of Jerusalem was about 25,000 during that time but during festivals like the Passover and Pentecost, that population could jump up to 100,000 with visitors from all over the Roman Empire coming in to observe the ceremonies and this day was no exception. It was just a normal day in Jerusalem during Pentecost.
Yeah, about that. It was probably 8AM when our story starts and normal was about to get thrown out the window. According to Luke, the Jesus followers were all in one house doing what one might expect devout Jewish people to do during a holy feast such as this when suddenly what sounded like a mighty windstorm ascended on the house and, according to those who were in the house, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each one of them as the Holy Spirit entered into each individual and they began speaking in different languages as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability. Like I said, so much for being a normal day.
Now this thing must have been loud because people who were not, yes, you heard me correctly, that wasn’t a typo, when people who were not in the building heard it, they came running to see what had caused this noise. When they got there, what they saw stopped them dead in their tracks. They were hearing these people, Galileans, talking about all of these amazing things that God had done, okay, normal for a Jewish religious festival perhaps except….these Galileans weren’t speaking in Aramaic, they were speaking in the different languages represented in the Roman people. What. Was. This? The people who were now filing into the house were amazed because they knew that these uneducated Galileans weren’t supposed to have the ability to do this and yet…there they were, speaking fluently in the dialects from all over the Roman Empire.
Now there’s at least one in every crowd who is cynical enough to doubt the obvious and, this crowd was no exception. There were some people who started mocking what they saw and said, “They’re just drunk, sailin’ three sheets to the wind,” which is a stupid thing to say as I think about it. I mean, it’s been many years now but I too been drunk a time or two in my life and when I was, trust me because I was there, I couldn’t even speak English clearly, much less somebody else’s language that I’d never heard before. Anyway, back to the story, Peter stood up and addressed the crowd, first by putting to rest the, “they’ve been drinking too much,” story (it was only 9AM) and then he preached a sermon. It was a great sermon and quite effective. Approximately 3000 people who heard him became Jesus followers that day.
Next week, I want to talk about what Peter actually said because it ties right in with Easter but today, I want to point out some logistical details that most people, including me until I actually thought about it, miss. The biggest thing that stands out to me as I look at this event was how strategic God was being as He put the wheels in motion for this event.
In the first place, it wasn’t just any old day that God chose to give His followers the Holy Spirit, it was a major Jewish festival, Pentecost and people were in Jerusalem from all over the Roman Empire and here’s what’s worth noting about that. Many of these people didn’t live in Jerusalem or even Judea, they were just there for Pentecost and when Pentecost was over, they were going back home. People were there from as far west as Rome, as far south as Egypt and as far east as the Parthian Empire which is near the Caspian Sea. These people were hearing the Gospel message being declared in their native language and 3000 of them became Jesus followers that day. And you can bet your life that of those 3000 who didn’t live in Jerusalem, when they went home, they took the Gospel message home with them. “The Messiah has come and I am now following Him.” And they told how they heard this loud noise at this building in Jerusalem and how they were hearing these uneducated Galileans speaking in their language. (Rabbit trail: Twenty-five or thirty years later when Luke actually wrote Acts and it started to circulate in the Christian communities throughout the Roman Empire, there would have been people reading it for the first time who would have said, “Yeah! I was there! That’s what happened!” Or their parents had been there and that’s the story that they told them.)
The second thing that’s worth noting is that God is the one who is making this happen. The first Jesus followers were not able to speak in these other languages until they were filled with the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. By the way, for the record, the Holy Spirit is not an “it”, He is a Him. He has intellect and He has emotions and, in Acts 2, He took up permanent residence in these people. The Book of Acts is a book containing miracles but God the Holy Spirit is the one who is enabling the early Christians with the ability to perform those miracles.
The third thing that stands out to me is how the 3000 converts are introduced by Luke. Luke describes them as being devout or God-fearing people. They had a healthy respect for God and they took God seriously. For 2000 years, since Abraham, and then later reinforced with specifics by Moses, God had laid out the requirements for how a person was to approach Him in order to be accepted by Him and these people, centuries later, took what was written seriously. They were still doing things like Moses had prescribed because they sincerely wanted to please God. In other words, at Pentecost, when Peter preached his sermon, they were ready to hear it and that leads me to the application point today.
Today, I want to address my readers who perhaps have much in common with these people. See if this doesn’t strike a chord. You’ve been raised in a church so you have heard all of the stories about God and Jesus and you’ve bought into Christianity. And I mean that in a good way. You take what is taught seriously. You try and do the right thing because, well, it’s the right thing to do. You’d like to think that you have a good reputation because you never get in trouble and not just because you’re sneaky good and don’t get caught, but, because you honestly don’t do bad things. You’re the kind of person who you’d like to think that people would want to have as a friend because you’re nice to people. And, you like going to church and what not but here’s the kicker. Lately, it feels like something is missing. It feels like something is off. You aren’t alone, by the way. Many people who have been raised in a church and bought into what is being taught come to this point sometime in their life. I know I did and I think that what might be appropriate here is to go back to what Peter said to this original group of devout people. Now, in this case, he didn’t need to tell people that they needed a savior, they already knew that and they would agree with him. What he told them though, in a nutshell, was that the Messiah had come, His name was Jesus and salvation was available through Him and only Him. He then said that they needed to repent of their sins, and in context, one of the biggest sins these people had to repent of is to stop trying to do stuff to earn their way to God and realize that they couldn’t earn their way to God but to place their faith in Jesus instead. He then said, be baptized. Now hear me carefully reader and understand the context because, if you don’t, you’re going to get off track. We need to understand what baptism meant to these people at the time. Baptism wasn’t a ceremonial act, it was a public expression of an all-in commitment to follow Jesus as an act of faith. What Peter was saying was for his audience to place their faith in Jesus and make a decision to follow Jesus with all of their being.
Now what this means for us is this. We have to stop trying to earn our way into heaven. We have to stop trying to be good enough so that God will accept us. What we have a tendency to do is add to the Gospel message, do what I call a “Jesus and,” way of salvation. We tend to think that we need to place our faith in Jesus and do the right things in order for us to make God accept us. News flash. It doesn’t work that way. God loves us already and we can never be “good enough” on our own for God to accept us, it’s just not possible. What God wants us to do is to place our faith in Jesus and then do the right things because we’re following Jesus, not so that God will accept us. Remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8 – 9) That means that this whole business of being accepted by God, salvation as we’ve been taught since we were in Sunday School, is an act that is initiated by God as He extends to us undeserved favor in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our responsibility is to receive it by faith, apply it to our lives and with the intent that we will follow Jesus to the best of our ability for the rest of our lives. By the way, that following part does actually get easier because once we place our faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who entered into those early Christians enters into you bringing the ability to follow Jesus. I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that if you have been trying to follow Jesus without placing your faith in Jesus, that’s probably what’s off. So, how about it? Is today the day that you settle this matter once and for all. Is today the day that you just place your faith in Jesus and acknowledge that it’s only by the grace of God and His grace alone that you will be accepted into His presence? Is today the day that you quit trying to earn your way to God and just receive what Jesus did for you? If so, tell Him. Pray something like this maybe. “God, I’ve been trying to get right with you by doing all the right stuff and it’s just not working. In the first place, as you already know and I’m just now figuring out, I’ll never be able to be good enough to be accepted by you because you are holy and I’ve sinned, I’ve rebelled against you and that’s caused a separation between us. But today I want to end all that. I want to place my faith in Jesus and accept Him as my Savior and my Lord. Thank you for sending Jesus to die and pay the penalty for my rebellion. I’m sorry for the things that I have done and I’m asking You to please forgive me for all of that. Today I accept Jesus as my Savior and I will live the rest of my life following Him to the best of my ability. In Jesus name. Amen.”
Next week I want to take a look at Peter's sermon to see what he actually said to his audience and see how it applies to us today. See you then.
Yeah, about that. It was probably 8AM when our story starts and normal was about to get thrown out the window. According to Luke, the Jesus followers were all in one house doing what one might expect devout Jewish people to do during a holy feast such as this when suddenly what sounded like a mighty windstorm ascended on the house and, according to those who were in the house, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each one of them as the Holy Spirit entered into each individual and they began speaking in different languages as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability. Like I said, so much for being a normal day.
Now this thing must have been loud because people who were not, yes, you heard me correctly, that wasn’t a typo, when people who were not in the building heard it, they came running to see what had caused this noise. When they got there, what they saw stopped them dead in their tracks. They were hearing these people, Galileans, talking about all of these amazing things that God had done, okay, normal for a Jewish religious festival perhaps except….these Galileans weren’t speaking in Aramaic, they were speaking in the different languages represented in the Roman people. What. Was. This? The people who were now filing into the house were amazed because they knew that these uneducated Galileans weren’t supposed to have the ability to do this and yet…there they were, speaking fluently in the dialects from all over the Roman Empire.
Now there’s at least one in every crowd who is cynical enough to doubt the obvious and, this crowd was no exception. There were some people who started mocking what they saw and said, “They’re just drunk, sailin’ three sheets to the wind,” which is a stupid thing to say as I think about it. I mean, it’s been many years now but I too been drunk a time or two in my life and when I was, trust me because I was there, I couldn’t even speak English clearly, much less somebody else’s language that I’d never heard before. Anyway, back to the story, Peter stood up and addressed the crowd, first by putting to rest the, “they’ve been drinking too much,” story (it was only 9AM) and then he preached a sermon. It was a great sermon and quite effective. Approximately 3000 people who heard him became Jesus followers that day.
Next week, I want to talk about what Peter actually said because it ties right in with Easter but today, I want to point out some logistical details that most people, including me until I actually thought about it, miss. The biggest thing that stands out to me as I look at this event was how strategic God was being as He put the wheels in motion for this event.
In the first place, it wasn’t just any old day that God chose to give His followers the Holy Spirit, it was a major Jewish festival, Pentecost and people were in Jerusalem from all over the Roman Empire and here’s what’s worth noting about that. Many of these people didn’t live in Jerusalem or even Judea, they were just there for Pentecost and when Pentecost was over, they were going back home. People were there from as far west as Rome, as far south as Egypt and as far east as the Parthian Empire which is near the Caspian Sea. These people were hearing the Gospel message being declared in their native language and 3000 of them became Jesus followers that day. And you can bet your life that of those 3000 who didn’t live in Jerusalem, when they went home, they took the Gospel message home with them. “The Messiah has come and I am now following Him.” And they told how they heard this loud noise at this building in Jerusalem and how they were hearing these uneducated Galileans speaking in their language. (Rabbit trail: Twenty-five or thirty years later when Luke actually wrote Acts and it started to circulate in the Christian communities throughout the Roman Empire, there would have been people reading it for the first time who would have said, “Yeah! I was there! That’s what happened!” Or their parents had been there and that’s the story that they told them.)
The second thing that’s worth noting is that God is the one who is making this happen. The first Jesus followers were not able to speak in these other languages until they were filled with the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. By the way, for the record, the Holy Spirit is not an “it”, He is a Him. He has intellect and He has emotions and, in Acts 2, He took up permanent residence in these people. The Book of Acts is a book containing miracles but God the Holy Spirit is the one who is enabling the early Christians with the ability to perform those miracles.
The third thing that stands out to me is how the 3000 converts are introduced by Luke. Luke describes them as being devout or God-fearing people. They had a healthy respect for God and they took God seriously. For 2000 years, since Abraham, and then later reinforced with specifics by Moses, God had laid out the requirements for how a person was to approach Him in order to be accepted by Him and these people, centuries later, took what was written seriously. They were still doing things like Moses had prescribed because they sincerely wanted to please God. In other words, at Pentecost, when Peter preached his sermon, they were ready to hear it and that leads me to the application point today.
Today, I want to address my readers who perhaps have much in common with these people. See if this doesn’t strike a chord. You’ve been raised in a church so you have heard all of the stories about God and Jesus and you’ve bought into Christianity. And I mean that in a good way. You take what is taught seriously. You try and do the right thing because, well, it’s the right thing to do. You’d like to think that you have a good reputation because you never get in trouble and not just because you’re sneaky good and don’t get caught, but, because you honestly don’t do bad things. You’re the kind of person who you’d like to think that people would want to have as a friend because you’re nice to people. And, you like going to church and what not but here’s the kicker. Lately, it feels like something is missing. It feels like something is off. You aren’t alone, by the way. Many people who have been raised in a church and bought into what is being taught come to this point sometime in their life. I know I did and I think that what might be appropriate here is to go back to what Peter said to this original group of devout people. Now, in this case, he didn’t need to tell people that they needed a savior, they already knew that and they would agree with him. What he told them though, in a nutshell, was that the Messiah had come, His name was Jesus and salvation was available through Him and only Him. He then said that they needed to repent of their sins, and in context, one of the biggest sins these people had to repent of is to stop trying to do stuff to earn their way to God and realize that they couldn’t earn their way to God but to place their faith in Jesus instead. He then said, be baptized. Now hear me carefully reader and understand the context because, if you don’t, you’re going to get off track. We need to understand what baptism meant to these people at the time. Baptism wasn’t a ceremonial act, it was a public expression of an all-in commitment to follow Jesus as an act of faith. What Peter was saying was for his audience to place their faith in Jesus and make a decision to follow Jesus with all of their being.
Now what this means for us is this. We have to stop trying to earn our way into heaven. We have to stop trying to be good enough so that God will accept us. What we have a tendency to do is add to the Gospel message, do what I call a “Jesus and,” way of salvation. We tend to think that we need to place our faith in Jesus and do the right things in order for us to make God accept us. News flash. It doesn’t work that way. God loves us already and we can never be “good enough” on our own for God to accept us, it’s just not possible. What God wants us to do is to place our faith in Jesus and then do the right things because we’re following Jesus, not so that God will accept us. Remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8 – 9) That means that this whole business of being accepted by God, salvation as we’ve been taught since we were in Sunday School, is an act that is initiated by God as He extends to us undeserved favor in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our responsibility is to receive it by faith, apply it to our lives and with the intent that we will follow Jesus to the best of our ability for the rest of our lives. By the way, that following part does actually get easier because once we place our faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who entered into those early Christians enters into you bringing the ability to follow Jesus. I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that if you have been trying to follow Jesus without placing your faith in Jesus, that’s probably what’s off. So, how about it? Is today the day that you settle this matter once and for all. Is today the day that you just place your faith in Jesus and acknowledge that it’s only by the grace of God and His grace alone that you will be accepted into His presence? Is today the day that you quit trying to earn your way to God and just receive what Jesus did for you? If so, tell Him. Pray something like this maybe. “God, I’ve been trying to get right with you by doing all the right stuff and it’s just not working. In the first place, as you already know and I’m just now figuring out, I’ll never be able to be good enough to be accepted by you because you are holy and I’ve sinned, I’ve rebelled against you and that’s caused a separation between us. But today I want to end all that. I want to place my faith in Jesus and accept Him as my Savior and my Lord. Thank you for sending Jesus to die and pay the penalty for my rebellion. I’m sorry for the things that I have done and I’m asking You to please forgive me for all of that. Today I accept Jesus as my Savior and I will live the rest of my life following Him to the best of my ability. In Jesus name. Amen.”
Next week I want to take a look at Peter's sermon to see what he actually said to his audience and see how it applies to us today. See you then.
Part 7: The Sermon that Triggered the Splash Event
I don’t know how many of you reading this are NFL fans but, in the NFL, right now, they are in the period of their calendar year known as “free agency.” This is when all of the veteran players not currently under contract are allowed to negotiate with any team in the league that they want to. Now, as far as free agents are concerned, there are always some big names, some good players who are available because their current teams just can’t afford to keep them. There’s this thing called a salary cap in the league which limits how much a team can spend in any given year on payroll and that means that during this time of the year that there are some really good players available but they don’t exactly come cheap and, if a team can sign one of these players, it’s called a splash signing because it brings in a really good player on the roster who can change everything. At least that’s the theory…. Sorry Denver, Russ didn’t exactly work out, did he?
The NFL isn’t the only place where there are splash events. The Bible has them too, events that absolutely change everything and, in terms of splash events in the New Testament, aside from the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, Pentecost was by far the biggest splash event on record. At the beginning of the day, there were 120 Jesus followers total but by the end of the day, there were 3000 new converts to the faith and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. In terms of splash events, in my book, they don’t come more splash than that and one of the key components to that event was a sermon preached by a man who just fifty days prior had denied even knowing who Jesus was. The man was Peter and what I want to do in the next few minutes is talk about that sermon, especially what it was that stood out to me.
Let me start though by telling you what didn’t stand out to me. It wasn’t the prophecy that Peter appealed to, although prophecy when it comes to Jesus is really phenomenal. Rabbit trail, did you know that there are over 60 major messianic prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament that have been fulfilled? Pretty cool, huh? And, for the skeptics out there, not all of them are supernatural miracle stuff either, some of them are just normal stuff that don’t involve miracles at all. Let’s just take eight of them for example. I have included the Old Testament references so you know that I’m not just making this up. Number one, the Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah. (Genesis 49:10) Number two, the Messiah would come from the family of David. (2Samuel 7:12 – 16) Number three, the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. (Micah 5:2) Number four, the Messiah would come out of Egypt, (Jesus’ parents fled there with him when he was a toddler.) (Hosea 11:1) Number five, the Messiah would enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey. (Zechariah 9:9) Number six, the Messiah would be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. (Zechariah 11:12) Number seven, that same silver would be thrown on the temple floor. (Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver and, in remorse, would throw it on the temple floor the next day.) (Zechariah 11:13) And, number eight, they would cast lots for the Messiah’s clothing when he was being crucified. (Psalm 22:18)
So, what we have there are eight random prophecies about the Messiah written centuries before Jesus’ birth and for any statistics nerds reading this, here’s a question for you. What are the odds that any one man, centuries later, could fulfill just these eight prophecies? There’s actually an answer to that. According to a study done by a couple of mathematicians, Peter W. Stoner and Robert Newman, in their book Science Speaks, they estimated that the odds of only eight of the prophecies relating to Jesus such as the ones that I listed in the previous paragraph being fulfilled by any one man was only 1 in 10 to the 17th power. For those of us who are not math people, let me give us a visual instead. Imagine covering the whole state of Texas in silver dollars two feet deep and drawing a red X on one of them and mixing it into the pile where it would be randomly placed somewhere in Texas. Now, blindfold a person and let them walk anywhere in Texas that they want and then, when they decided that they are tired of walking, let them reach down and dig or whatever they want to do and pull up one silver dollar. The odds of them pulling up the silver dollar with a red X on it are the same as one man fulfilling those eight of the prophecies in his life. For the record, Jesus did it with all 60. Let that thought sink in for a minute. Still want to try and tell me that Jesus was just a good moral teacher…..?
Anyway, like I said, Peter appealed to prophecy both to explain why these Galileans were speaking in foreign languages and also to point his audience to Jesus. When it came to pointing them to Jesus, Peter used prophecies written by David which talked about a resurrection and the Messiah not suffering decay and then Peter made this distinction. He pointed out there was no way that David could have been talking about himself when he wrote because David was still in his tomb and everyone knew it. (They could visit it if they wanted to.) There was, however, a tomb that was empty and everyone knew about that one too. It was Jesus’ tomb. Many in his audience were there when Jesus was condemned by Pilate, was crucified by the Romans and they watched Him die on that Friday. They also knew the exact location of His tomb and they knew about the Roman seal that had been placed on the big stone that sealed it and what it meant. (If anyone were to break that Roman seal, it was a capital offense punishable by death.) And yet, on Sunday morning, that seal had been broken, that two-ton stone had been rolled up the hill and that tomb was empty. Nobody had produced the body and these Apostles were claiming to have seen Him alive after that. As Peter was talking, the lights were starting to come on for those people in the audience.
Now, as interesting as all of this was, that’s not what stood out to me though, there was something else. It was something else that Peter said. You know, it’s been said that when something is written in the Bible it’s important and when it’s written twice, it’s really important. Peter said something twice in this sermon. Early in his sermon, when Peter was introducing Jesus as the application point, he said, “this Jesus…... you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” Then, in the end, he said it again. “Let all of the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ (Messiah), this Jesus whom you crucified.” This Jesus whom you crucified… you crucified… he said it to them twice and it cut them to the heart, in fact, it terrified them. Some of those listening to him had probably been there screaming “Crucify him!” when Pilate brought Him out before them on that Friday morning and now, fifty days later, the realization of what they had done left them utterly dismayed. And the others in the audience, those pilgrims who were not there personally but were listening now, were also dismayed because they knew that if the nation of Israel was in trouble with God, because they were part of that nation, so were they.
When asked what they should do, Peter gave this response. “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus.” Like I said last week, these people were devout so for some of them, what repent meant was quit trying to earn their way to God by doing good stuff and admit that they would never be good enough no matter how many animals they sacrificed. It meant acknowledging that they needed a savior and Jesus was who they needed. It meant acknowledging that Jesus was indeed God and not just a man. And being baptized? Remember the context here. Baptism for these people meant that they were all in following Jesus.
That’s what stood out to me. The phrase “This Jesus whom you crucified,” but not just because of what it meant to the original hearers but also what it meant to me as well. You see, as I think about it, I crucified Jesus too. Granted, I wasn’t there. In fact, because my ancestors were Irish, I’m not even sure that they were there, but my rebellion, my active and passive rebellion against God, is what made it necessary for Jesus to even be there in the first place. Know what else? According to the Bible, you’re in the same boat with me. You crucified Him too for the same reason I did. Oh, our rebellion might look different. You probably rebelled in different ways than I did, in fact, I know you did but the end result was the same. My rebellion, your rebellion, our rebellion is what made it necessary for Jesus to die on the cross if we were to have any hope at all to be reconciled to God.
That’s a rather depressing thought. Fortunately, however, it’s not the end of the story. There’s one other thing that Peter said that day that must be brought up because it’s the game changer. It was the game changer for his original audience and it’s the game changer for us. “This Jesus God raised up,” were his exact words and what Peter said was that God has raised Jesus from the grave and the significance of that is straight forward. The penalty for our rebellion has been paid. Jesus was our substitute. He died so we wouldn’t have to and his resurrection is proof that God the Father has accepted the payment for our rebellion. Consider this, although Peter didn’t say it to his original audience, according to John in his gospel account, Jesus’ final words on the cross were, “it is finished!” According to Matthew, it was a loud cry but it wasn’t a cry of defeat like, “I’ve had enough. I can’t do it anymore.” No, it was a triumphant cry of victory. You see, the Greek word that’s translated in English to say, “it is finished,” is tetelestai and it can also mean “paid in full.” In fact, this is the word that they used to write on certificates of debt once a debt had been paid in full and that’s the word that Jesus used. The bottom line is that the penalty for our rebellion has been paid and now the only thing left for us to do is to apply that payment to ourselves because, if we choose not to, we’re still on the hook for the payment for our rebellion and the price that that incurred is an eternity separated from God in the place that Jesus said was hell. How horrible is that place? Seriously, do you think that Jesus would have died for us unless hell is as horrible as advertised? Think about it for a minute. Jesus took hell on Himself so you and I wouldn’t have to.
So now, the choice that is staring us in the face is the same as the choice that was placed before Peter’s original audience. We can either choose to take God up on His offer, accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, or we can go it on our own and face the consequences. I won’t lie to you. I implore you to take Jesus up on his offer. I implore you to pray today and admit that you need a savior and to turn away from your rebellion and accept Jesus as both your Savior and Lord. I won’t tell you that your life is going to get magically better, it may not, but what will be different is that your place in eternity is sealed. I’ve heard it stated like this. If a person chooses to follow Jesus, earth, as ugly as it gets, is the closest to hell that person will ever experience. By the same token, if a person chooses to reject Jesus, earth is as close to heaven as that person will ever get. So, what will it be? No one can make this decision for you. It’s 100% your decision.
If you decided to make that decision today to follow Jesus, why don’t you shoot me an email at the email listed below. I’d like to talk to you. In the meantime, next week, I want to take a look at some of the ways that these early Jesus followers had their lives changed very early. I’ll see you then.
For those of you reading this, if I have described things here that resonate with you and you want to talk, get a hold of me. Email me at [email protected].
The NFL isn’t the only place where there are splash events. The Bible has them too, events that absolutely change everything and, in terms of splash events in the New Testament, aside from the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, Pentecost was by far the biggest splash event on record. At the beginning of the day, there were 120 Jesus followers total but by the end of the day, there were 3000 new converts to the faith and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. In terms of splash events, in my book, they don’t come more splash than that and one of the key components to that event was a sermon preached by a man who just fifty days prior had denied even knowing who Jesus was. The man was Peter and what I want to do in the next few minutes is talk about that sermon, especially what it was that stood out to me.
Let me start though by telling you what didn’t stand out to me. It wasn’t the prophecy that Peter appealed to, although prophecy when it comes to Jesus is really phenomenal. Rabbit trail, did you know that there are over 60 major messianic prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament that have been fulfilled? Pretty cool, huh? And, for the skeptics out there, not all of them are supernatural miracle stuff either, some of them are just normal stuff that don’t involve miracles at all. Let’s just take eight of them for example. I have included the Old Testament references so you know that I’m not just making this up. Number one, the Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah. (Genesis 49:10) Number two, the Messiah would come from the family of David. (2Samuel 7:12 – 16) Number three, the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. (Micah 5:2) Number four, the Messiah would come out of Egypt, (Jesus’ parents fled there with him when he was a toddler.) (Hosea 11:1) Number five, the Messiah would enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey. (Zechariah 9:9) Number six, the Messiah would be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. (Zechariah 11:12) Number seven, that same silver would be thrown on the temple floor. (Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver and, in remorse, would throw it on the temple floor the next day.) (Zechariah 11:13) And, number eight, they would cast lots for the Messiah’s clothing when he was being crucified. (Psalm 22:18)
So, what we have there are eight random prophecies about the Messiah written centuries before Jesus’ birth and for any statistics nerds reading this, here’s a question for you. What are the odds that any one man, centuries later, could fulfill just these eight prophecies? There’s actually an answer to that. According to a study done by a couple of mathematicians, Peter W. Stoner and Robert Newman, in their book Science Speaks, they estimated that the odds of only eight of the prophecies relating to Jesus such as the ones that I listed in the previous paragraph being fulfilled by any one man was only 1 in 10 to the 17th power. For those of us who are not math people, let me give us a visual instead. Imagine covering the whole state of Texas in silver dollars two feet deep and drawing a red X on one of them and mixing it into the pile where it would be randomly placed somewhere in Texas. Now, blindfold a person and let them walk anywhere in Texas that they want and then, when they decided that they are tired of walking, let them reach down and dig or whatever they want to do and pull up one silver dollar. The odds of them pulling up the silver dollar with a red X on it are the same as one man fulfilling those eight of the prophecies in his life. For the record, Jesus did it with all 60. Let that thought sink in for a minute. Still want to try and tell me that Jesus was just a good moral teacher…..?
Anyway, like I said, Peter appealed to prophecy both to explain why these Galileans were speaking in foreign languages and also to point his audience to Jesus. When it came to pointing them to Jesus, Peter used prophecies written by David which talked about a resurrection and the Messiah not suffering decay and then Peter made this distinction. He pointed out there was no way that David could have been talking about himself when he wrote because David was still in his tomb and everyone knew it. (They could visit it if they wanted to.) There was, however, a tomb that was empty and everyone knew about that one too. It was Jesus’ tomb. Many in his audience were there when Jesus was condemned by Pilate, was crucified by the Romans and they watched Him die on that Friday. They also knew the exact location of His tomb and they knew about the Roman seal that had been placed on the big stone that sealed it and what it meant. (If anyone were to break that Roman seal, it was a capital offense punishable by death.) And yet, on Sunday morning, that seal had been broken, that two-ton stone had been rolled up the hill and that tomb was empty. Nobody had produced the body and these Apostles were claiming to have seen Him alive after that. As Peter was talking, the lights were starting to come on for those people in the audience.
Now, as interesting as all of this was, that’s not what stood out to me though, there was something else. It was something else that Peter said. You know, it’s been said that when something is written in the Bible it’s important and when it’s written twice, it’s really important. Peter said something twice in this sermon. Early in his sermon, when Peter was introducing Jesus as the application point, he said, “this Jesus…... you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” Then, in the end, he said it again. “Let all of the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ (Messiah), this Jesus whom you crucified.” This Jesus whom you crucified… you crucified… he said it to them twice and it cut them to the heart, in fact, it terrified them. Some of those listening to him had probably been there screaming “Crucify him!” when Pilate brought Him out before them on that Friday morning and now, fifty days later, the realization of what they had done left them utterly dismayed. And the others in the audience, those pilgrims who were not there personally but were listening now, were also dismayed because they knew that if the nation of Israel was in trouble with God, because they were part of that nation, so were they.
When asked what they should do, Peter gave this response. “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus.” Like I said last week, these people were devout so for some of them, what repent meant was quit trying to earn their way to God by doing good stuff and admit that they would never be good enough no matter how many animals they sacrificed. It meant acknowledging that they needed a savior and Jesus was who they needed. It meant acknowledging that Jesus was indeed God and not just a man. And being baptized? Remember the context here. Baptism for these people meant that they were all in following Jesus.
That’s what stood out to me. The phrase “This Jesus whom you crucified,” but not just because of what it meant to the original hearers but also what it meant to me as well. You see, as I think about it, I crucified Jesus too. Granted, I wasn’t there. In fact, because my ancestors were Irish, I’m not even sure that they were there, but my rebellion, my active and passive rebellion against God, is what made it necessary for Jesus to even be there in the first place. Know what else? According to the Bible, you’re in the same boat with me. You crucified Him too for the same reason I did. Oh, our rebellion might look different. You probably rebelled in different ways than I did, in fact, I know you did but the end result was the same. My rebellion, your rebellion, our rebellion is what made it necessary for Jesus to die on the cross if we were to have any hope at all to be reconciled to God.
That’s a rather depressing thought. Fortunately, however, it’s not the end of the story. There’s one other thing that Peter said that day that must be brought up because it’s the game changer. It was the game changer for his original audience and it’s the game changer for us. “This Jesus God raised up,” were his exact words and what Peter said was that God has raised Jesus from the grave and the significance of that is straight forward. The penalty for our rebellion has been paid. Jesus was our substitute. He died so we wouldn’t have to and his resurrection is proof that God the Father has accepted the payment for our rebellion. Consider this, although Peter didn’t say it to his original audience, according to John in his gospel account, Jesus’ final words on the cross were, “it is finished!” According to Matthew, it was a loud cry but it wasn’t a cry of defeat like, “I’ve had enough. I can’t do it anymore.” No, it was a triumphant cry of victory. You see, the Greek word that’s translated in English to say, “it is finished,” is tetelestai and it can also mean “paid in full.” In fact, this is the word that they used to write on certificates of debt once a debt had been paid in full and that’s the word that Jesus used. The bottom line is that the penalty for our rebellion has been paid and now the only thing left for us to do is to apply that payment to ourselves because, if we choose not to, we’re still on the hook for the payment for our rebellion and the price that that incurred is an eternity separated from God in the place that Jesus said was hell. How horrible is that place? Seriously, do you think that Jesus would have died for us unless hell is as horrible as advertised? Think about it for a minute. Jesus took hell on Himself so you and I wouldn’t have to.
So now, the choice that is staring us in the face is the same as the choice that was placed before Peter’s original audience. We can either choose to take God up on His offer, accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, or we can go it on our own and face the consequences. I won’t lie to you. I implore you to take Jesus up on his offer. I implore you to pray today and admit that you need a savior and to turn away from your rebellion and accept Jesus as both your Savior and Lord. I won’t tell you that your life is going to get magically better, it may not, but what will be different is that your place in eternity is sealed. I’ve heard it stated like this. If a person chooses to follow Jesus, earth, as ugly as it gets, is the closest to hell that person will ever experience. By the same token, if a person chooses to reject Jesus, earth is as close to heaven as that person will ever get. So, what will it be? No one can make this decision for you. It’s 100% your decision.
If you decided to make that decision today to follow Jesus, why don’t you shoot me an email at the email listed below. I’d like to talk to you. In the meantime, next week, I want to take a look at some of the ways that these early Jesus followers had their lives changed very early. I’ll see you then.
For those of you reading this, if I have described things here that resonate with you and you want to talk, get a hold of me. Email me at [email protected].
Part 8: The Audacious Prayer of the Early Church
One of the things that stood out to me about these early followers of Jesus as Luke recorded the events was how much these people prayed. It’s a constant theme in these people’s lives. There’s a verse in one of Paul’s letters where he commands his readers to “pray without ceasing,” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and these people did just that. All. The. Time. There was one prayer though that especially stood out to me when I was reading Acts and what was particularly striking to me about this prayer was not just that they were praying again but rather, what they were praying for. You see, in context, what these people prayed for was not what I would have expected them to be praying for considering the circumstances they were facing. Let me tell you about it.
The actual prayer I’m referring to is recorded in Acts 4 but the back story that set it up begins in Acts 3. One day Peter and John were on their way to the Temple to take part in the 3PM prayer service, (of course) and on their way to the Temple, they encountered a man who was lame from his birth at the entrance, begging for money from people as he always had his entire life. Cliff notes version, Peter didn’t give the man any money but, in the name of Jesus, he healed him and enabled him to instantly walk. As you can imagine, the man was overjoyed and immediately followed Peter and John into the Temple walking, and leaping, and praising God. The people inside were amazed as the story started to spread. Here was this lame beggar who had been outside the Temple since forever now able to walk and, of course, everyone wanted to know what happened.
Now Peter, recognizing the opportunity, took advantage of the situation to point people to Jesus. Briefly, he told them was it wasn’t through their power or godliness that this man was healed but rather, it was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who did this. This was the same God who brought glory to Jesus, he said. It was this Jesus, he reminded them, who they and the Gentiles and Herod and Pilate and the Sanhedrin crucified but God had raised from the dead. To emphasize the point, several times he pointed out that Jesus had been crucified but God had raised Him from the grave and they, the apostles, were eyewitnesses to that fact because they had seen Jesus alive after He had been crucified. It was also in the name of Jesus that this man who had been crippled was now able to walk. Peter and John were also calling on people in their audience to repent of their sinful ways and place their faith in Jesus.
About this time the Temple authorities came by, the same group of people who had arranged for Jesus to be crucified two months earlier, and, upon hearing what Peter and John were speaking about, had them arrested. Because it was late in the day and illegal, according to Jewish law, to hold a trial at night, Peter and John spent that night in prison.
The next morning they were brought before the Sanhedrin, the ruling body and, in what was essentially an interrogation, it was demanded that Peter and John explain themselves where they told the same story, complete with the “this Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised from the dead and we are eyewitnesses and this lame man can now walk through the power of Jesus name,” part. They also ended it with this sentence. “There is salvation in no other means, (referring to Jesus). God has given no other name under heaven by which we can be saved.”
There is something that we need to understand here as we read these words. This was 1st Century Jerusalem and this was the Roman Empire. There were no 1st Amendment rights in play here. That statement was enough to potentially get Peter and John killed but they boldly said it anyway.
The Sanhedrin had a problem. On the one hand, they wanted Peter and John to quit talking about this but they couldn’t deny the miracle. A man who had been lame for over 40 years could now walk and the two guys who made it happen said they did it through the power in Jesus’ name. Furthermore, Peter and John had the same boldness and moxie that Jesus had when it came to talking about this and they made it quite clear that they weren’t going to shut up about it either. What the Sanhedrin decided to do was to release Peter and John and sternly warn them not to preach in Jesus’ name again.
When Peter and John were released, they went to the place where the early church had gathered and told them what the Jewish leaders had told them. They had not been given just any idle threat; it was a threat with teeth. The people who had threatened them were the same people who had pulled strings and had Jesus executed several months earlier. Bottom line, if they killed Jesus, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill them and any other Jesus follower either. The threat was legitimate.
The assembly of Jesus followers responded by instantly praying and here’s where it gets interesting. They didn’t primarily pray that God would deliver them from this threat, that God would change the circumstances or somehow make the threat go away. Instead, this is what they prayed. “And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word. Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” (Acts 4: 29 – 30 NLT) In other words, what they asked God to do was to keep doing what He was doing and to give them boldness to keep talking about it. They were asking for boldness and courage in spite of the circumstances facing them, to fulfill their mission. They were putting God’s agenda ahead of their own safety in spite of what it might end up costing them.
For the record, according to the eyewitnesses who Luke interviewed when he wrote Acts, the room actually shook and Jesus’ followers were granted boldness to keep talking about what they heard.
You know, looking at this story, several points of application stand out. The first thing is for the modern-day Christians. When it comes to being truth tellers, that is, telling the truth about Jesus and about what the Bible actually says, and about putting it into practice, do we dare ask God to give us courage and boldness to say and live what we believe? Now, I’m not asking if we pray for a license to be obnoxious. As I read Acts, the early church was respectful when they confronted their enemies. What I am asking though, is if we pray for courage and boldness to tell the truth and model it in our everyday lives? Personally, as I thought about it, I found that to be rather convicting.
The second thing that stood out though is something that is universal, it’s something for everyone. It was what Peter and John said directly to the Sanhedrin the morning that the governing body decided to release them. Referring to Jesus, they made this statement. “There is salvation in no other name. There is no other name by which someone can be saved.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is a statement with implications that fly in the face of public opinion in the 21st century, world-wide.
In the first place, because of its objective nature as opposed to being subjective, it’s either true or it isn’t. Secondly, if it’s indeed true, then there’s a judgement coming, something where all of us will be held accountable for the things we’ve done in our lives and, apparently, we won’t fare well in this judgement. It’s the only thing that makes sense in light of the statement, “there is no other name by which someone can be saved.” Thirdly, and this is what really flies in the face of popular opinion, Jesus is exclusively the only means for salvation, the only means for a person to get right with God. What this statement is saying is that if a person places their faith in any other person except Jesus, they will not be saved. And before you ask, what about the other moral religions of the world, the other ethical religions of the world? According to this statement, those other religions are unable to get it done.
So, here’s a question for us to mull around in our heads for a while. How could Peter and John possibly make such a bold statement like that? It all came back to one simple, yet powerful and absolute truth. They had seen Jesus crucified. For example, John was there at the foot of the cross when Jesus breathed His last. They knew where He’d been buried and then they saw the empty tomb that Sunday morning. And shortly thereafter, they saw Him alive on multiple occasions and even ate breakfast with Him once. When Jesus had been alive, He had said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) He said that He was the exclusive way to God. Throughout His ministry, He predicted His death and His resurrection after three days. And then He pulled it off and Peter and John were eyewitnesses to that. Make no mistake about it, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the basis, and the only basis, upon which Peter and John could make such an exclusive statement and have it be a statement with any credibility at all. But they couldn’t unsee what they had seen with their own eyes, so they boldly made that statement about Jesus.
And here’s what this means for us. If all of this was true back then, that Jesus actually did rise from the grave and was the only means for salvation, is it any less true for us today? Logic would dictate to us that nothing has changed. But you know, that’s actually great news for us because it also means that God hasn’t changed either. It means that, in spite of whatever circumstances our world is in or our life is in, God still loves us…unconditionally. Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) When Jesus was talking to an elderly, respected Pharisee named Nicodemus, He told him this. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son that whoever places their faith in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Yes, Jesus is the only way to God but that exclusive means to salvation is open to everyone who will turn from their rebellion against God and put their faith in Jesus. And did you pick up on what motivated God to do this? Love…unconditional love.
You know, people tend to forget this all the time but salvation wasn’t something that God had to be coerced into, it was actually His idea. He authored the plan from start to finish and now, the only thing that He’s waiting on is people, us, you and me, to place our faith in Him for salvation. Understand this though, God will not force anyone to place their faith in Jesus who doesn’t want to. However, as long as a person has breath, it is possible for a person to place their faith in Jesus and be saved. But, if a person chooses not to place their faith in Jesus, at the end of their life, God will permit them to go to the only place in all of creation where God will not be, nor will He ever be, and that place is hell. It’s a literal place and it’s horrible. In fact, it’s so horrible that Jesus actually talked more about hell than He did about heaven in His teachings and it was the reason why Jesus died on the cross, willingly, in the first place. He took hell for us so we wouldn’t have to.
So, how about it? If you’re reading this and you’ve never placed your faith in Jesus, is today the day you’re going to do it? If you’re wondering how, the usual way is through prayer. You could pray a prayer kind of like this. “God, I’m tired of doing things my way and I’m through rebelling against you. I want to turn away from all of that and I want to turn to you. I admit that I have thought thoughts that were wrong, that I have done things, even good things with selfish motives, and in many cases I have done things that are just wrong and all of this has caused a separation between You and me. I believe though that Jesus died in my place for all of this and that You raised Him from the grave. From this point forward I am placing my faith in Jesus and I will follow Him as best I can for the rest of my life. Thank you for forgiving me. In Jesus name, Amen.”
If you decided to make that decision to follow Jesus, and would like to talk more about it, send me an email at [email protected]. I’d be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, for the rest of you. I’ll see you next week as we dig into Acts a little bit deeper.
The actual prayer I’m referring to is recorded in Acts 4 but the back story that set it up begins in Acts 3. One day Peter and John were on their way to the Temple to take part in the 3PM prayer service, (of course) and on their way to the Temple, they encountered a man who was lame from his birth at the entrance, begging for money from people as he always had his entire life. Cliff notes version, Peter didn’t give the man any money but, in the name of Jesus, he healed him and enabled him to instantly walk. As you can imagine, the man was overjoyed and immediately followed Peter and John into the Temple walking, and leaping, and praising God. The people inside were amazed as the story started to spread. Here was this lame beggar who had been outside the Temple since forever now able to walk and, of course, everyone wanted to know what happened.
Now Peter, recognizing the opportunity, took advantage of the situation to point people to Jesus. Briefly, he told them was it wasn’t through their power or godliness that this man was healed but rather, it was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who did this. This was the same God who brought glory to Jesus, he said. It was this Jesus, he reminded them, who they and the Gentiles and Herod and Pilate and the Sanhedrin crucified but God had raised from the dead. To emphasize the point, several times he pointed out that Jesus had been crucified but God had raised Him from the grave and they, the apostles, were eyewitnesses to that fact because they had seen Jesus alive after He had been crucified. It was also in the name of Jesus that this man who had been crippled was now able to walk. Peter and John were also calling on people in their audience to repent of their sinful ways and place their faith in Jesus.
About this time the Temple authorities came by, the same group of people who had arranged for Jesus to be crucified two months earlier, and, upon hearing what Peter and John were speaking about, had them arrested. Because it was late in the day and illegal, according to Jewish law, to hold a trial at night, Peter and John spent that night in prison.
The next morning they were brought before the Sanhedrin, the ruling body and, in what was essentially an interrogation, it was demanded that Peter and John explain themselves where they told the same story, complete with the “this Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised from the dead and we are eyewitnesses and this lame man can now walk through the power of Jesus name,” part. They also ended it with this sentence. “There is salvation in no other means, (referring to Jesus). God has given no other name under heaven by which we can be saved.”
There is something that we need to understand here as we read these words. This was 1st Century Jerusalem and this was the Roman Empire. There were no 1st Amendment rights in play here. That statement was enough to potentially get Peter and John killed but they boldly said it anyway.
The Sanhedrin had a problem. On the one hand, they wanted Peter and John to quit talking about this but they couldn’t deny the miracle. A man who had been lame for over 40 years could now walk and the two guys who made it happen said they did it through the power in Jesus’ name. Furthermore, Peter and John had the same boldness and moxie that Jesus had when it came to talking about this and they made it quite clear that they weren’t going to shut up about it either. What the Sanhedrin decided to do was to release Peter and John and sternly warn them not to preach in Jesus’ name again.
When Peter and John were released, they went to the place where the early church had gathered and told them what the Jewish leaders had told them. They had not been given just any idle threat; it was a threat with teeth. The people who had threatened them were the same people who had pulled strings and had Jesus executed several months earlier. Bottom line, if they killed Jesus, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill them and any other Jesus follower either. The threat was legitimate.
The assembly of Jesus followers responded by instantly praying and here’s where it gets interesting. They didn’t primarily pray that God would deliver them from this threat, that God would change the circumstances or somehow make the threat go away. Instead, this is what they prayed. “And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word. Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” (Acts 4: 29 – 30 NLT) In other words, what they asked God to do was to keep doing what He was doing and to give them boldness to keep talking about it. They were asking for boldness and courage in spite of the circumstances facing them, to fulfill their mission. They were putting God’s agenda ahead of their own safety in spite of what it might end up costing them.
For the record, according to the eyewitnesses who Luke interviewed when he wrote Acts, the room actually shook and Jesus’ followers were granted boldness to keep talking about what they heard.
You know, looking at this story, several points of application stand out. The first thing is for the modern-day Christians. When it comes to being truth tellers, that is, telling the truth about Jesus and about what the Bible actually says, and about putting it into practice, do we dare ask God to give us courage and boldness to say and live what we believe? Now, I’m not asking if we pray for a license to be obnoxious. As I read Acts, the early church was respectful when they confronted their enemies. What I am asking though, is if we pray for courage and boldness to tell the truth and model it in our everyday lives? Personally, as I thought about it, I found that to be rather convicting.
The second thing that stood out though is something that is universal, it’s something for everyone. It was what Peter and John said directly to the Sanhedrin the morning that the governing body decided to release them. Referring to Jesus, they made this statement. “There is salvation in no other name. There is no other name by which someone can be saved.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is a statement with implications that fly in the face of public opinion in the 21st century, world-wide.
In the first place, because of its objective nature as opposed to being subjective, it’s either true or it isn’t. Secondly, if it’s indeed true, then there’s a judgement coming, something where all of us will be held accountable for the things we’ve done in our lives and, apparently, we won’t fare well in this judgement. It’s the only thing that makes sense in light of the statement, “there is no other name by which someone can be saved.” Thirdly, and this is what really flies in the face of popular opinion, Jesus is exclusively the only means for salvation, the only means for a person to get right with God. What this statement is saying is that if a person places their faith in any other person except Jesus, they will not be saved. And before you ask, what about the other moral religions of the world, the other ethical religions of the world? According to this statement, those other religions are unable to get it done.
So, here’s a question for us to mull around in our heads for a while. How could Peter and John possibly make such a bold statement like that? It all came back to one simple, yet powerful and absolute truth. They had seen Jesus crucified. For example, John was there at the foot of the cross when Jesus breathed His last. They knew where He’d been buried and then they saw the empty tomb that Sunday morning. And shortly thereafter, they saw Him alive on multiple occasions and even ate breakfast with Him once. When Jesus had been alive, He had said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) He said that He was the exclusive way to God. Throughout His ministry, He predicted His death and His resurrection after three days. And then He pulled it off and Peter and John were eyewitnesses to that. Make no mistake about it, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the basis, and the only basis, upon which Peter and John could make such an exclusive statement and have it be a statement with any credibility at all. But they couldn’t unsee what they had seen with their own eyes, so they boldly made that statement about Jesus.
And here’s what this means for us. If all of this was true back then, that Jesus actually did rise from the grave and was the only means for salvation, is it any less true for us today? Logic would dictate to us that nothing has changed. But you know, that’s actually great news for us because it also means that God hasn’t changed either. It means that, in spite of whatever circumstances our world is in or our life is in, God still loves us…unconditionally. Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) When Jesus was talking to an elderly, respected Pharisee named Nicodemus, He told him this. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son that whoever places their faith in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Yes, Jesus is the only way to God but that exclusive means to salvation is open to everyone who will turn from their rebellion against God and put their faith in Jesus. And did you pick up on what motivated God to do this? Love…unconditional love.
You know, people tend to forget this all the time but salvation wasn’t something that God had to be coerced into, it was actually His idea. He authored the plan from start to finish and now, the only thing that He’s waiting on is people, us, you and me, to place our faith in Him for salvation. Understand this though, God will not force anyone to place their faith in Jesus who doesn’t want to. However, as long as a person has breath, it is possible for a person to place their faith in Jesus and be saved. But, if a person chooses not to place their faith in Jesus, at the end of their life, God will permit them to go to the only place in all of creation where God will not be, nor will He ever be, and that place is hell. It’s a literal place and it’s horrible. In fact, it’s so horrible that Jesus actually talked more about hell than He did about heaven in His teachings and it was the reason why Jesus died on the cross, willingly, in the first place. He took hell for us so we wouldn’t have to.
So, how about it? If you’re reading this and you’ve never placed your faith in Jesus, is today the day you’re going to do it? If you’re wondering how, the usual way is through prayer. You could pray a prayer kind of like this. “God, I’m tired of doing things my way and I’m through rebelling against you. I want to turn away from all of that and I want to turn to you. I admit that I have thought thoughts that were wrong, that I have done things, even good things with selfish motives, and in many cases I have done things that are just wrong and all of this has caused a separation between You and me. I believe though that Jesus died in my place for all of this and that You raised Him from the grave. From this point forward I am placing my faith in Jesus and I will follow Him as best I can for the rest of my life. Thank you for forgiving me. In Jesus name, Amen.”
If you decided to make that decision to follow Jesus, and would like to talk more about it, send me an email at [email protected]. I’d be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, for the rest of you. I’ll see you next week as we dig into Acts a little bit deeper.
Part 9: A Deeper Dive Into that Audacious Prayer
Last week I looked at one of the early prayers by the early church that is recorded in Acts and, not meaning to be redundant, what stood out to me was how different it was from what one might expect the Apostles to pray in light of their circumstances. Originally, for this week, I had planned on taking a look at how God answered that prayer, because upon reading the next two or three chapters after Acts 4, it’s quite apparent that He did but. Before I do that, I want to pause and examine the prayer itself to see just what it was that these people actually prayed and how they prayed because there’s a lot to be learned from it. What I want to do today is to take a deeper dive into that prayer.
Peter and John, if you recall, had been brought before the Sanhedrin for healing a man who was born lame and preaching in the name of Jesus in the Temple. These were dangerous waters they were treading into because it had been the Sanhedrin who had been the primary antagonistic influence that got Jesus crucified and Peter and John were now preaching Jesus in the Temple, the Sanhedrin’s home turf. The Sanhedrin wanted them to be silenced but, by the same token, they couldn’t deny that a miracle had been performed and the people held the Apostles in high regard. Their solution was to sternly warn them not to preach anymore in the name of Jesus and then release them.
Peter and John, upon their release went straight to the room where the early church was meeting. They reported what had happened and the early church promptly responded by praying and here’s where I want to camp today. Here’s how Luke records that prayer.
“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one.’ Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” (Acts 4:24 – 28 NIV)
The first thing that stands out about this prayer is that, at its core, it’s a response to a valid, credible threat. Notice that I didn’t say, reaction, I said response because there is a difference. A reaction tends to be based on either fear or anger or both. A response, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily have those two emotions and, if they are present, those emotions while acknowledged perhaps, aren’t the driving force behind the prayer or the ensuing dialog, assuming that there’s a conversation of some kind. In any case, as we look at this prayer in its entirety, the threat is acknowledged but there’s no anger or fear expressed at all. And, now that I think about it, that’s another interesting thing too, because the early church was predominantly Jewish and would have been well versed in the Psalms, which were often quoted as prayers, including a portion of this one. In those Old Testament prayers though, often a plea for vengeance, an appeal to God’s justice, was included in them. In this prayer however, that feature is conspicuous by its absence. Things that make you go hmmm.
Now, getting back to the actual prayer and analyzing it, notice where these early Christians started. They didn’t start with the threat, they started by acknowledging who they were praying to, that is God Himself, and acknowledging His power first. Specifically, they acknowledged that God created the earth and the sea and everything that’s in it.
Stop. Let’s detour here for a minute, shall we. Like a hole in the wall greasy dive of a restaurant that serves excellent food, there’s a savory morsel of truth here. Many people in the world say that God, or someone, created the world. It’s been something that we’ve heard for ever and ever and we’re just so familiar with the idea that we say it like it’s nothing but have you ever stopped and considered what’s involved in that statement? Just take the statement at face value and don’t overthink it. It says that you got nothing and then, all of a sudden, BOOM, you got a world with life and …. stuff. Do you have any idea what kind of just raw power it took to pull that one off? It’s off the rails stuff. And, digging a bit deeper, then there’s the precision of both inner space and outer space and all that goes into that just to make it work. The precision stuff is just mind boggling. That’s an interesting concept to consider because whether you’re a theist or an atheist, we all know that if them numbers, temperatures and chemical ratios, ain’t spot on, (Sorry readers, my country roots are rearing their ugly head again. My bad.) anyway, like I was saying, if those numbers aren’t spot on, we aren’t even having this conversation now because we’d all have been fried, frozen, or suffocated a long time ago. In any case, those of us who are theists are saying that God got it right and this early church acknowledged it as well. That was who they were praying to.
Pig tailing on that idea, these early Christians also acknowledged that God was sovereign, that is in spite of what was going on, God still had everything under control. And they reinforced that idea by quoting God’s own words back to Him from the Old Testament. Paraphrasing here, essentially, what they said to God was, “you said this would happen and now it has.” As proof, they pointed out recent events that took place when Jesus was crucified and then they got to the point of their prayer request. “Consider their threats.” Or, to put it another way, “God, this is serious…Now, enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” Looking further at this prayer, here’s something further to consider. These people weren’t just praying religious prayers because it was what they were supposed to do. No, they realized that if God didn’t show up big and grant them supernatural boldness to keep talking about what they had seen, they were going to fold like a bad poker hand. And then, they asked God to keep doing what He had been doing. In other words, they asked God to enable them to complete their mission and for God to keep doing what He had been doing so as to validate what they were saying.
So, what’s the point of all this? What can we learn from this story that we can apply to the 21st Century? First, for those of us who profess to be Jesus followers and identify with Him, when we pray, do we realize whom we are praying to? I mean, really? In our minds, are we praying to the God of the Universe with unlimited power, knowledge, and wisdom and all of that? Or, when we pray, is it just a religious ritual for us? Because, if God is really who the Bible says that He is, then that means that it’s an absolute waste of everyone’s time to try and throw up a smoke and mirrors act because He can see right through it. In fact, if that’s what we knowingly do to Him, it’s frankly an insult to the God of the Universe, the Creator of all things. On the other hand, if we come to God with the realization of who He is and what He can do and that He can actually get involved and change things if He chooses to, then that’s a whole different matter entirely. It totally flips the field.
Now, the second thing that we need to remember when we pray to God, and this is reinforcing a point I was driving at last week, is that we need to be asking God to fulfill His agenda in our lives and sphere of influence, the key phrase here being, “His agenda.” Remember that part of the Lord’s Prayer that Matthew recorded when Jesus preached what is known as, The Sermon on the Mount. “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” were His exact words. Remember, God is not the genie in Aladdin who is obligated to give the person who rubs the lamp three wishes. He’s sovereign over all creation, He does what He pleases and He’s not obligated to do anything. He is however a holy and gracious and loving God who delights in giving good gifts so I guess the best explanation for why God answers prayer is it’s because of His grace and His wisdom. And He has also entrusted His followers as His agents to do His bidding, to act as His ambassadors, representing Him on earth. So, I guess what I am saying is that those of us who are following Jesus need to make sure that what we are asking for is in line with His agenda. I think that Craig Groeschel said it best. “Jesus doesn’t invite us to a life of comfort and ease but to a life of surrender and sacrifice.” So how do we know what God is calling us to? Well, we have to get inside of God’s head, learn His thoughts and learn His ways, value what He values. And the best way to do that is to study the Bible and become quite familiar with what it says which means that we should read it regularly. Don’t just read it once…read it again and again and again. Go on deep dives into it.
The final point I want to bring up is actually directed more to people who are not yet Jesus followers. Is this you maybe? At one time in your life you had these great plans but, you know, life just hasn’t gone like you had planned. In fact, that could be an understatement to say the least because, if the truth be told, it could be argued that you have what we in the Roach household call the Reverse Midas Touch. (You know how everything that Midas touched turned to gold? Well, when you have the Reverse Midas Touch, everything you touch corrupts and crumbles and breaks. Or to put it another way, the glass isn’t just half empty, it actually has a hole in the bottom and the water is leaking out faster than the faucet is filling it.) Anyway, from your perspective, you’re to that point in life where nothing works at all and you’re frankly at the end of your rope. You’ve heard people say that God loves you but, you know, the way your life is going, there seems to be a big time disconnect. You actually wonder sometimes if God hates you or if He’s, at the minimum, really mad at you. (If the latter is true, and you’re thinking that whatever it was that you did that made God mad, you need to find out what it is and never do it again.) My friend, if this is you, God isn’t mad at you. There’s actually something else going on. He’s allowing you to experience the consequences of your choices and leading you right straight to the foot of the cross. In other words, God is telling you that if you want your life to work, if you want real lasting peace and satisfaction, following Him is the only way that you’re going to experience that. Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that if you follow Jesus that you will have a trouble-free life, the early church certainly didn’t experience that as we’re going to see in the next couple of weeks. But you won’t be going it alone anymore because the same Holy Spirit that took up permanent residence inside these early Christians will do the same for you. Yes, God will change your life. He’s going to probably do a major over-haul on your character but that’s what following Jesus is about.
If that’s where you’re at, by the way, and you want to follow Jesus, what is stopping you from doing that? It isn’t God. You know, He’s throwing a party some day and He’s sent out invitations and there’s an invitation with your name on it. I’m serious. Jesus talked about it in Luke 14:21 - 23. “Go out to the streets and alleys of the town and compel them to come…” And after it was reported that that had been done and there was still room at the party, He continued, “Go out to the roads and the country lanes and compel them to come.” My friend, He was talking about you when He said that. He said, “Hey, go out and make sure that (insert your name here) gets an invitation. I want them at my party.” So, the question now is, are you going to take Jesus up on His offer? If you do, why don’t you tell God about it through what we call prayer. Prayer, by the way, is not complicated. In fact, prayer is simply talking to God like you’re talking to another person. Just honestly tell God that you’re ready to stop doing life the way that you’ve been doing it and you’re ready to do things His way. Admit to Him that you’ve rebelled against Him, that you have done things and thought things that you knew were wrong but that now you’re ready to turn away from all of that. Thank God for sending Jesus to die on the cross for your rebellion and tell God that you believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and that you’re ready to follow Him from this day forward.
You know speaking of parties, if you do choose to take Jesus up on His offer, Jesus said that the angels throw a mini party in celebration before you get there. Yes, they get really excited about that because they know how excited God gets when someone repents and comes to Him.
One other thing, if you prayed that prayer and if you’ve decided to make that decision to follow Jesus, I don’t care what country you’re living in or what language you speak, get a hold of me. I’d love to talk with you. If you don’t speak English, my friend, don’t worry about it. There are several translator programs out there so we can make it happen. Just email me at [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.
In the meantime, for all of my readers, next week in this series we’ll take a look at the first way that God answered the prayer of the early church. See you then.
Peter and John, if you recall, had been brought before the Sanhedrin for healing a man who was born lame and preaching in the name of Jesus in the Temple. These were dangerous waters they were treading into because it had been the Sanhedrin who had been the primary antagonistic influence that got Jesus crucified and Peter and John were now preaching Jesus in the Temple, the Sanhedrin’s home turf. The Sanhedrin wanted them to be silenced but, by the same token, they couldn’t deny that a miracle had been performed and the people held the Apostles in high regard. Their solution was to sternly warn them not to preach anymore in the name of Jesus and then release them.
Peter and John, upon their release went straight to the room where the early church was meeting. They reported what had happened and the early church promptly responded by praying and here’s where I want to camp today. Here’s how Luke records that prayer.
“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one.’ Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” (Acts 4:24 – 28 NIV)
The first thing that stands out about this prayer is that, at its core, it’s a response to a valid, credible threat. Notice that I didn’t say, reaction, I said response because there is a difference. A reaction tends to be based on either fear or anger or both. A response, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily have those two emotions and, if they are present, those emotions while acknowledged perhaps, aren’t the driving force behind the prayer or the ensuing dialog, assuming that there’s a conversation of some kind. In any case, as we look at this prayer in its entirety, the threat is acknowledged but there’s no anger or fear expressed at all. And, now that I think about it, that’s another interesting thing too, because the early church was predominantly Jewish and would have been well versed in the Psalms, which were often quoted as prayers, including a portion of this one. In those Old Testament prayers though, often a plea for vengeance, an appeal to God’s justice, was included in them. In this prayer however, that feature is conspicuous by its absence. Things that make you go hmmm.
Now, getting back to the actual prayer and analyzing it, notice where these early Christians started. They didn’t start with the threat, they started by acknowledging who they were praying to, that is God Himself, and acknowledging His power first. Specifically, they acknowledged that God created the earth and the sea and everything that’s in it.
Stop. Let’s detour here for a minute, shall we. Like a hole in the wall greasy dive of a restaurant that serves excellent food, there’s a savory morsel of truth here. Many people in the world say that God, or someone, created the world. It’s been something that we’ve heard for ever and ever and we’re just so familiar with the idea that we say it like it’s nothing but have you ever stopped and considered what’s involved in that statement? Just take the statement at face value and don’t overthink it. It says that you got nothing and then, all of a sudden, BOOM, you got a world with life and …. stuff. Do you have any idea what kind of just raw power it took to pull that one off? It’s off the rails stuff. And, digging a bit deeper, then there’s the precision of both inner space and outer space and all that goes into that just to make it work. The precision stuff is just mind boggling. That’s an interesting concept to consider because whether you’re a theist or an atheist, we all know that if them numbers, temperatures and chemical ratios, ain’t spot on, (Sorry readers, my country roots are rearing their ugly head again. My bad.) anyway, like I was saying, if those numbers aren’t spot on, we aren’t even having this conversation now because we’d all have been fried, frozen, or suffocated a long time ago. In any case, those of us who are theists are saying that God got it right and this early church acknowledged it as well. That was who they were praying to.
Pig tailing on that idea, these early Christians also acknowledged that God was sovereign, that is in spite of what was going on, God still had everything under control. And they reinforced that idea by quoting God’s own words back to Him from the Old Testament. Paraphrasing here, essentially, what they said to God was, “you said this would happen and now it has.” As proof, they pointed out recent events that took place when Jesus was crucified and then they got to the point of their prayer request. “Consider their threats.” Or, to put it another way, “God, this is serious…Now, enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” Looking further at this prayer, here’s something further to consider. These people weren’t just praying religious prayers because it was what they were supposed to do. No, they realized that if God didn’t show up big and grant them supernatural boldness to keep talking about what they had seen, they were going to fold like a bad poker hand. And then, they asked God to keep doing what He had been doing. In other words, they asked God to enable them to complete their mission and for God to keep doing what He had been doing so as to validate what they were saying.
So, what’s the point of all this? What can we learn from this story that we can apply to the 21st Century? First, for those of us who profess to be Jesus followers and identify with Him, when we pray, do we realize whom we are praying to? I mean, really? In our minds, are we praying to the God of the Universe with unlimited power, knowledge, and wisdom and all of that? Or, when we pray, is it just a religious ritual for us? Because, if God is really who the Bible says that He is, then that means that it’s an absolute waste of everyone’s time to try and throw up a smoke and mirrors act because He can see right through it. In fact, if that’s what we knowingly do to Him, it’s frankly an insult to the God of the Universe, the Creator of all things. On the other hand, if we come to God with the realization of who He is and what He can do and that He can actually get involved and change things if He chooses to, then that’s a whole different matter entirely. It totally flips the field.
Now, the second thing that we need to remember when we pray to God, and this is reinforcing a point I was driving at last week, is that we need to be asking God to fulfill His agenda in our lives and sphere of influence, the key phrase here being, “His agenda.” Remember that part of the Lord’s Prayer that Matthew recorded when Jesus preached what is known as, The Sermon on the Mount. “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” were His exact words. Remember, God is not the genie in Aladdin who is obligated to give the person who rubs the lamp three wishes. He’s sovereign over all creation, He does what He pleases and He’s not obligated to do anything. He is however a holy and gracious and loving God who delights in giving good gifts so I guess the best explanation for why God answers prayer is it’s because of His grace and His wisdom. And He has also entrusted His followers as His agents to do His bidding, to act as His ambassadors, representing Him on earth. So, I guess what I am saying is that those of us who are following Jesus need to make sure that what we are asking for is in line with His agenda. I think that Craig Groeschel said it best. “Jesus doesn’t invite us to a life of comfort and ease but to a life of surrender and sacrifice.” So how do we know what God is calling us to? Well, we have to get inside of God’s head, learn His thoughts and learn His ways, value what He values. And the best way to do that is to study the Bible and become quite familiar with what it says which means that we should read it regularly. Don’t just read it once…read it again and again and again. Go on deep dives into it.
The final point I want to bring up is actually directed more to people who are not yet Jesus followers. Is this you maybe? At one time in your life you had these great plans but, you know, life just hasn’t gone like you had planned. In fact, that could be an understatement to say the least because, if the truth be told, it could be argued that you have what we in the Roach household call the Reverse Midas Touch. (You know how everything that Midas touched turned to gold? Well, when you have the Reverse Midas Touch, everything you touch corrupts and crumbles and breaks. Or to put it another way, the glass isn’t just half empty, it actually has a hole in the bottom and the water is leaking out faster than the faucet is filling it.) Anyway, from your perspective, you’re to that point in life where nothing works at all and you’re frankly at the end of your rope. You’ve heard people say that God loves you but, you know, the way your life is going, there seems to be a big time disconnect. You actually wonder sometimes if God hates you or if He’s, at the minimum, really mad at you. (If the latter is true, and you’re thinking that whatever it was that you did that made God mad, you need to find out what it is and never do it again.) My friend, if this is you, God isn’t mad at you. There’s actually something else going on. He’s allowing you to experience the consequences of your choices and leading you right straight to the foot of the cross. In other words, God is telling you that if you want your life to work, if you want real lasting peace and satisfaction, following Him is the only way that you’re going to experience that. Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that if you follow Jesus that you will have a trouble-free life, the early church certainly didn’t experience that as we’re going to see in the next couple of weeks. But you won’t be going it alone anymore because the same Holy Spirit that took up permanent residence inside these early Christians will do the same for you. Yes, God will change your life. He’s going to probably do a major over-haul on your character but that’s what following Jesus is about.
If that’s where you’re at, by the way, and you want to follow Jesus, what is stopping you from doing that? It isn’t God. You know, He’s throwing a party some day and He’s sent out invitations and there’s an invitation with your name on it. I’m serious. Jesus talked about it in Luke 14:21 - 23. “Go out to the streets and alleys of the town and compel them to come…” And after it was reported that that had been done and there was still room at the party, He continued, “Go out to the roads and the country lanes and compel them to come.” My friend, He was talking about you when He said that. He said, “Hey, go out and make sure that (insert your name here) gets an invitation. I want them at my party.” So, the question now is, are you going to take Jesus up on His offer? If you do, why don’t you tell God about it through what we call prayer. Prayer, by the way, is not complicated. In fact, prayer is simply talking to God like you’re talking to another person. Just honestly tell God that you’re ready to stop doing life the way that you’ve been doing it and you’re ready to do things His way. Admit to Him that you’ve rebelled against Him, that you have done things and thought things that you knew were wrong but that now you’re ready to turn away from all of that. Thank God for sending Jesus to die on the cross for your rebellion and tell God that you believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and that you’re ready to follow Him from this day forward.
You know speaking of parties, if you do choose to take Jesus up on His offer, Jesus said that the angels throw a mini party in celebration before you get there. Yes, they get really excited about that because they know how excited God gets when someone repents and comes to Him.
One other thing, if you prayed that prayer and if you’ve decided to make that decision to follow Jesus, I don’t care what country you’re living in or what language you speak, get a hold of me. I’d love to talk with you. If you don’t speak English, my friend, don’t worry about it. There are several translator programs out there so we can make it happen. Just email me at [email protected] and we’ll make it happen.
In the meantime, for all of my readers, next week in this series we’ll take a look at the first way that God answered the prayer of the early church. See you then.
Part 10: The Question that Demands an Answer
When one looks at the growth of that early church, one of the questions that begs to be asked is why did it grow the way that it did and at the rate that it did? It’s certainly been something that I’ve been thinking about as I unpacked Luke's account in Acts. Something I always remember reminding my students when I used to teach Washington State history was to keep in mind that the people who they were reading about were real people who passed gas every day just like the rest of us do and not just cardboard cutouts on paper. That idea is applicable here too because the people in Acts were also real people who, just like us, lived in the confines of 24-hour days. And, according to Luke, included in the group of people who he wrote about, there was a sizeable group who made a decision that would change their lives forever. A change that, incidentally, would not make their lives easier but would, in fact, cost many of them everything they had. So, the question that is demanding an answer is why would these people make such a decision?
As we ponder this, to fully answer that question, it’s necessary that we step back and take full inventory of the situation and put some things in historical context. The setting where the early church has its roots was Jerusalem, one of the most volatile cities in the Roman Empire. Judea, the country where Jerusalem was located, was under the relentless shackles of Roman occupation and most of the population was poor due, in part, to heavy Roman taxation. Locally, the social, political, and economic structure of the nation revolved around the temple in Jerusalem and the men who ran the temple, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the two different religious factions that made up the Sanhedrin. This entity wielded an enormous amount of local power. (If we were to make a comparison that would illustrate what kind of power they possessed, think of a combination of United States Supreme Court and U. S. Congress with an executive arm using an established 2000-year-old religious system to enforce its agenda and voila, you have a clear picture of the Sanhedrin and what’s going on.) Yes, that’s an enormous amount of power and to make matters worse, this system was oppressive and Jesus called them on it periodically during his public ministry. He even went so far as to overthrow the money changer’s tables in the Temple on two occasions and, as proof for why He could do such things, say such things, He claimed to be God therefore He had the authority to do all of this. (One might make the case that this is what got Jesus executed but that would be an oversimplification.) And then there was the early church, an entity that, if you asked the Roman Empire at least, you would be told was another sect of Judaism. However, this early church was not just another sect of Judaism. This was a radical group of Jesus followers who claimed that Jesus was not only God but that He had risen from the grave. Furthermore, they had proof because the earliest followers in this movement claimed to have seen Jesus alive. In addition, and what especially drew the Sanhedrin’s ire anyway, this group kept teaching in Jesus’ name, claiming that He was the only way to be saved and that it was the Sanhedrin who had Jesus executed by the Romans. Talk about poking the bear. And, what made matters worse, at least from the Sanhedrin’s perspective, the Apostles were doing miracles in Jesus’ name that were undeniable so they were gaining popularity with the general populace. The bottom line, as far as the Sanhedrin was concerned, this movement, which would soon become known as, “The Way,” had to be shut down by whatever means necessary which meant, for these early followers of Jesus, that their lives which were hard already, just got a lot harder.
This brings us full circle back to the original question. Why was this early church growing as rapidly as it was? Let’s see if we can get inside of the heads of these early converts and see if we can figure out just what tipped the scale. In the first place, as has been mentioned before, there was the fact that Jesus had been crucified. That was an indisputable fact for several reasons. In the first place, many of the locals who came into contact with the Apostles had been in that crowd that day when Pilate brought Jesus out, screaming at the top of their lungs that He be crucified. And a whole bunch of them had seen Him hanging naked there on that cross. And they all knew that it was impossible for anyone to survive crucifixion. So yes, the absolute truth was that Jesus had died.
However, after that, things got dicey because there was this matter of an empty tomb where Jesus had been buried. Everyone knew where that was too. It was probably a 15-minute walk from downtown Jerusalem and yes, it was quite empty. The Roman seal on it was broken and the two-ton boulder that sealed the entrance was still rolled up the hill and Jesus’ body? Well, it was gone and all of the people who had a vested interest in producing Jesus’ dead body couldn’t produce it because they didn’t know where it was. The Romans? They didn’t have it. The Sanhedrin? They didn’t have it either. But, in the middle of this mystery, there was the testimony of the Apostles and others claiming to have seen Jesus alive on multiple occasions for forty days after He was crucified. Now, these people may have had many flaws but stupidity wasn’t one of them. Like all of the rest of us, they too knew that under ordinary circumstances, this story would have been farfetched but, since nobody else seemed to have a plausible answer for what happened to the body and the evidence that the Apostles were telling the truth was mounting, by process of elimination, the claim that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead was the only talking point that seemed to hold water. Furthermore, according to Acts 5:11, the Apostles were doing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people, things that were identical to what Jesus had done, things that, under no set of circumstances imaginable, the members of the Sanhedrin had the ability to duplicate. Put all of this together and the Apostles testimony had more and more credibility. Think of it like this. If this was a courtroom and the charge against Jesus was that He rose from the dead, the prosecution’s case would have been rock solid.
Now, as convincing as all of this is, for our purposes, there’s one more thing we must consider. There was one other factor at play here, the most important factor, the X factor, if you will. It was God’s part in all of this. Going back to the beginning of Luke’s account in Acts there was this verse that kicked everything off. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses…” were Jesus’ exact words in Acts 1:9. The One providing the power that was causing this early church to grow was the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit was at work in a powerful way and not just working miracles, although make no mistake about it, the Holy Spirit was the One actually doing the miracles, He was just using the Apostles as His agents, His instruments to do it. But He was doing something else as well. God, the Holy Spirit, was enabling people to comprehend what was going on. God, the Holy Spirit, was giving these people insight they had not previously had. Don’t kid yourself. For these people it was a paradigm shift. The idea that the Messiah was actually God in human flesh, the idea that the God of the Old Testament, the God who appeared to Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah…was actually one God in three persons, the Trinity, was a major change in thinking for these people and it wasn’t an idea that they came up with on their own. God wanted these people to follow Him and He was actively inviting them to do so. He was giving them insight that they previously didn’t possess.
So, what it all came down to was this. In what best could be explained as a process where God the Holy Spirit supernaturally through thought processes enlightened people to the truth of who Jesus was, and through concrete evidence comprised both of the testimony of the Apostles who claimed to have seen Jesus alive after He was crucified and the miracles that they saw themselves, people were coming to the conclusion that Jesus was indeed who the Apostles said He was and were following Him regardless of what it cost them personally. In my opinion, that’s the only explanation that makes any sense at all regarding why these people would do that.
In terms of application points, there’s probably a bunch but I want to focus on just two. First, calling all Jesus followers. Are you guys seeing what God was doing in the First Century? God gave these people a mission and, in conjunction with these early Jesus followers obedience, God was moving and changing people’s lives. Are you guys picking up on this? God hasn’t changed one iota and neither has His mission for the world. Do you know what else hasn’t changed? His means for accomplishing this mission, that hasn’t changed either. He wants to use us, you and me, complete with all of our flaws and imperfections, as His primary instrument to reach a world that desperately needs Him. To quote Scotty Scruggs my pastor at Northshore Community Church in Kirkland, Washington, “there is no Plan B, we’re it.”
How are we supposed to do that? Look at the early church. Use them as a model. Primarily, they prayed, and God moved and lives were changed. And they were committed and changed their priorities. The early church, in obedience, abandoned whatever personal missions they might have had for their lives and bought into His mission and God used them as instruments to change lives. The question that we need to ask, it seems to me, is this. Are we willing to pray as the early church prayed and are we willing to sell out to Jesus’ agenda like they did in our world? Guys, Jesus never asked for a passive, mental affirmation of truth, nor a one day out of the week attendance check in, He asked for people to follow Him whole heartedly and that’s what He’s asking from us. Will we do it perfectly? Probably not. I know that I don’t regardless of how hard I try to because it’s a growing process whereby we become more like Jesus every day. The question is though, are we going to take steps each day to buy into God’s mission and calling for our lives? Are we going to pray the kind of bold prayers that they prayed, the kinds of prayers that when God answers will cost us personally but literally change the lives of the people who we come in contact with? That’s a question that’s on the table for us. I wish I could tell you it’s different, based on everything I’m reading in the Bible it’s not. God is scouring the world for followers who are all in.
Now the second application point today is for the people reading this who wouldn’t call themselves Jesus followers. Let me give you a fundamental truth. Making a decision to follow Jesus is the best decision that a person can make for themselves because Jesus changes lives for the better. If you examine what changed people’s minds in that First Century, consider what they saw. People who were sick got better because God healed them. People who had a purpose in life that wasn’t satisfying, suddenly had a purpose in life that was satisfying. Character flaws were changed. People whose lives were marked by a tendency toward selfish accumulation of material wealth became generous and people who were frankly racist, became changed people, people no longer racist but who had a compassion for all people regardless of their race. Don’t misinterpret me though. I’m not saying that following Jesus made their lives easier. It often didn’t. I said that they were changed. Also, in addition to their lives changed on earth, their eternal destiny was changed as well because heaven, a real place just for the record, became their destiny. Those people in the First Century who chose to follow Jesus, examined the evidence and chose to follow Him not because their lives would get easier but rather, because they came to the conclusion that following Jesus was worth it. They saw following Jesus as something that had intrinsic value that outweighed the cost so they willingly paid it.
To choose to follow Jesus is a simple thing to do on the one hand. It means that you come to God, exactly as you are and you allow Him to be both savior and lord of your life. It means that you choose to believe, based on the evidence and eyewitness testimony that’s recorded in the Bible, that Jesus died on the cross and that God has raised Him from the grave. The scary part about following Jesus is the following part. You’re also turning your life over to God and allowing Him to change you and I’ll warn you up front, if your life is a car, it’s not in for a tune up, it’s most likely going to get an overhaul as God will transform you from the inside out. However, I can speak from personal experience, it’s worth it. And, if I could add one more thing, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you’re going to follow Jesus once you get life together and get good enough because you’re never going to be good enough. Jesus lived a perfect life, to use a term that shows up in the Bible, He was sinless and that’s the standard we have to meet. The bottom line is that none of us can meet that standard but God knew that, which is why Jesus was crucified. He paid the price for our sin even though He didn’t have to. As far as God is concerned, that debt has been paid and all that’s left is for us to apply it to our own lives through following Jesus. So, the question for each one of us is, what will we do about it? Will we choose to follow Jesus or go about it on our own? That’s the most important question we will have to answer our entire lives.
If you want to talk more about this, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, for all of my readers, next week in this series we’ll take a look at the way that God actually answered the prayer of that early church that we talked about last week. See you then.
As we ponder this, to fully answer that question, it’s necessary that we step back and take full inventory of the situation and put some things in historical context. The setting where the early church has its roots was Jerusalem, one of the most volatile cities in the Roman Empire. Judea, the country where Jerusalem was located, was under the relentless shackles of Roman occupation and most of the population was poor due, in part, to heavy Roman taxation. Locally, the social, political, and economic structure of the nation revolved around the temple in Jerusalem and the men who ran the temple, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the two different religious factions that made up the Sanhedrin. This entity wielded an enormous amount of local power. (If we were to make a comparison that would illustrate what kind of power they possessed, think of a combination of United States Supreme Court and U. S. Congress with an executive arm using an established 2000-year-old religious system to enforce its agenda and voila, you have a clear picture of the Sanhedrin and what’s going on.) Yes, that’s an enormous amount of power and to make matters worse, this system was oppressive and Jesus called them on it periodically during his public ministry. He even went so far as to overthrow the money changer’s tables in the Temple on two occasions and, as proof for why He could do such things, say such things, He claimed to be God therefore He had the authority to do all of this. (One might make the case that this is what got Jesus executed but that would be an oversimplification.) And then there was the early church, an entity that, if you asked the Roman Empire at least, you would be told was another sect of Judaism. However, this early church was not just another sect of Judaism. This was a radical group of Jesus followers who claimed that Jesus was not only God but that He had risen from the grave. Furthermore, they had proof because the earliest followers in this movement claimed to have seen Jesus alive. In addition, and what especially drew the Sanhedrin’s ire anyway, this group kept teaching in Jesus’ name, claiming that He was the only way to be saved and that it was the Sanhedrin who had Jesus executed by the Romans. Talk about poking the bear. And, what made matters worse, at least from the Sanhedrin’s perspective, the Apostles were doing miracles in Jesus’ name that were undeniable so they were gaining popularity with the general populace. The bottom line, as far as the Sanhedrin was concerned, this movement, which would soon become known as, “The Way,” had to be shut down by whatever means necessary which meant, for these early followers of Jesus, that their lives which were hard already, just got a lot harder.
This brings us full circle back to the original question. Why was this early church growing as rapidly as it was? Let’s see if we can get inside of the heads of these early converts and see if we can figure out just what tipped the scale. In the first place, as has been mentioned before, there was the fact that Jesus had been crucified. That was an indisputable fact for several reasons. In the first place, many of the locals who came into contact with the Apostles had been in that crowd that day when Pilate brought Jesus out, screaming at the top of their lungs that He be crucified. And a whole bunch of them had seen Him hanging naked there on that cross. And they all knew that it was impossible for anyone to survive crucifixion. So yes, the absolute truth was that Jesus had died.
However, after that, things got dicey because there was this matter of an empty tomb where Jesus had been buried. Everyone knew where that was too. It was probably a 15-minute walk from downtown Jerusalem and yes, it was quite empty. The Roman seal on it was broken and the two-ton boulder that sealed the entrance was still rolled up the hill and Jesus’ body? Well, it was gone and all of the people who had a vested interest in producing Jesus’ dead body couldn’t produce it because they didn’t know where it was. The Romans? They didn’t have it. The Sanhedrin? They didn’t have it either. But, in the middle of this mystery, there was the testimony of the Apostles and others claiming to have seen Jesus alive on multiple occasions for forty days after He was crucified. Now, these people may have had many flaws but stupidity wasn’t one of them. Like all of the rest of us, they too knew that under ordinary circumstances, this story would have been farfetched but, since nobody else seemed to have a plausible answer for what happened to the body and the evidence that the Apostles were telling the truth was mounting, by process of elimination, the claim that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead was the only talking point that seemed to hold water. Furthermore, according to Acts 5:11, the Apostles were doing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people, things that were identical to what Jesus had done, things that, under no set of circumstances imaginable, the members of the Sanhedrin had the ability to duplicate. Put all of this together and the Apostles testimony had more and more credibility. Think of it like this. If this was a courtroom and the charge against Jesus was that He rose from the dead, the prosecution’s case would have been rock solid.
Now, as convincing as all of this is, for our purposes, there’s one more thing we must consider. There was one other factor at play here, the most important factor, the X factor, if you will. It was God’s part in all of this. Going back to the beginning of Luke’s account in Acts there was this verse that kicked everything off. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses…” were Jesus’ exact words in Acts 1:9. The One providing the power that was causing this early church to grow was the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit was at work in a powerful way and not just working miracles, although make no mistake about it, the Holy Spirit was the One actually doing the miracles, He was just using the Apostles as His agents, His instruments to do it. But He was doing something else as well. God, the Holy Spirit, was enabling people to comprehend what was going on. God, the Holy Spirit, was giving these people insight they had not previously had. Don’t kid yourself. For these people it was a paradigm shift. The idea that the Messiah was actually God in human flesh, the idea that the God of the Old Testament, the God who appeared to Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah…was actually one God in three persons, the Trinity, was a major change in thinking for these people and it wasn’t an idea that they came up with on their own. God wanted these people to follow Him and He was actively inviting them to do so. He was giving them insight that they previously didn’t possess.
So, what it all came down to was this. In what best could be explained as a process where God the Holy Spirit supernaturally through thought processes enlightened people to the truth of who Jesus was, and through concrete evidence comprised both of the testimony of the Apostles who claimed to have seen Jesus alive after He was crucified and the miracles that they saw themselves, people were coming to the conclusion that Jesus was indeed who the Apostles said He was and were following Him regardless of what it cost them personally. In my opinion, that’s the only explanation that makes any sense at all regarding why these people would do that.
In terms of application points, there’s probably a bunch but I want to focus on just two. First, calling all Jesus followers. Are you guys seeing what God was doing in the First Century? God gave these people a mission and, in conjunction with these early Jesus followers obedience, God was moving and changing people’s lives. Are you guys picking up on this? God hasn’t changed one iota and neither has His mission for the world. Do you know what else hasn’t changed? His means for accomplishing this mission, that hasn’t changed either. He wants to use us, you and me, complete with all of our flaws and imperfections, as His primary instrument to reach a world that desperately needs Him. To quote Scotty Scruggs my pastor at Northshore Community Church in Kirkland, Washington, “there is no Plan B, we’re it.”
How are we supposed to do that? Look at the early church. Use them as a model. Primarily, they prayed, and God moved and lives were changed. And they were committed and changed their priorities. The early church, in obedience, abandoned whatever personal missions they might have had for their lives and bought into His mission and God used them as instruments to change lives. The question that we need to ask, it seems to me, is this. Are we willing to pray as the early church prayed and are we willing to sell out to Jesus’ agenda like they did in our world? Guys, Jesus never asked for a passive, mental affirmation of truth, nor a one day out of the week attendance check in, He asked for people to follow Him whole heartedly and that’s what He’s asking from us. Will we do it perfectly? Probably not. I know that I don’t regardless of how hard I try to because it’s a growing process whereby we become more like Jesus every day. The question is though, are we going to take steps each day to buy into God’s mission and calling for our lives? Are we going to pray the kind of bold prayers that they prayed, the kinds of prayers that when God answers will cost us personally but literally change the lives of the people who we come in contact with? That’s a question that’s on the table for us. I wish I could tell you it’s different, based on everything I’m reading in the Bible it’s not. God is scouring the world for followers who are all in.
Now the second application point today is for the people reading this who wouldn’t call themselves Jesus followers. Let me give you a fundamental truth. Making a decision to follow Jesus is the best decision that a person can make for themselves because Jesus changes lives for the better. If you examine what changed people’s minds in that First Century, consider what they saw. People who were sick got better because God healed them. People who had a purpose in life that wasn’t satisfying, suddenly had a purpose in life that was satisfying. Character flaws were changed. People whose lives were marked by a tendency toward selfish accumulation of material wealth became generous and people who were frankly racist, became changed people, people no longer racist but who had a compassion for all people regardless of their race. Don’t misinterpret me though. I’m not saying that following Jesus made their lives easier. It often didn’t. I said that they were changed. Also, in addition to their lives changed on earth, their eternal destiny was changed as well because heaven, a real place just for the record, became their destiny. Those people in the First Century who chose to follow Jesus, examined the evidence and chose to follow Him not because their lives would get easier but rather, because they came to the conclusion that following Jesus was worth it. They saw following Jesus as something that had intrinsic value that outweighed the cost so they willingly paid it.
To choose to follow Jesus is a simple thing to do on the one hand. It means that you come to God, exactly as you are and you allow Him to be both savior and lord of your life. It means that you choose to believe, based on the evidence and eyewitness testimony that’s recorded in the Bible, that Jesus died on the cross and that God has raised Him from the grave. The scary part about following Jesus is the following part. You’re also turning your life over to God and allowing Him to change you and I’ll warn you up front, if your life is a car, it’s not in for a tune up, it’s most likely going to get an overhaul as God will transform you from the inside out. However, I can speak from personal experience, it’s worth it. And, if I could add one more thing, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you’re going to follow Jesus once you get life together and get good enough because you’re never going to be good enough. Jesus lived a perfect life, to use a term that shows up in the Bible, He was sinless and that’s the standard we have to meet. The bottom line is that none of us can meet that standard but God knew that, which is why Jesus was crucified. He paid the price for our sin even though He didn’t have to. As far as God is concerned, that debt has been paid and all that’s left is for us to apply it to our own lives through following Jesus. So, the question for each one of us is, what will we do about it? Will we choose to follow Jesus or go about it on our own? That’s the most important question we will have to answer our entire lives.
If you want to talk more about this, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, for all of my readers, next week in this series we’ll take a look at the way that God actually answered the prayer of that early church that we talked about last week. See you then.
Part 11: Jail Break
Prayer? Does it work? Honest question, does it really work? Have you ever wrestled with that one? Have you ever wondered when you are praying if there’s someone out there who actually hears what you’re saying, what you’re asking and, if they are out there and if they are listening, are they actually able to deliver, to do what you’re asking them to do? If you have wondered that before, I have good news for you. You aren’t alone. We’ve all asked that question and many of us, myself included, would answer that question with a resounding, yes, prayer does work, it does change outcomes of things in life.
The reason it works is because of who I and others have been praying to. His name is God and He has revealed Himself to people both within the pages of a book commonly known as the Bible and, to a small group of people, He came down to earth as man who we know as Jesus. And yes, speaking from personal experience, He does answer prayer. I know this because I can point to a consistent pattern of answered prayers in my own life where albeit quietly often, God showed up big.
The early church though, if asked that question, might give a little different answer than me. Like me, they would emphatically say that, yes, prayer works, however, their evidence to support their answer might just be a little bit different from mine. You see, they would tell story after story of how God showed up in big and powerful ways. They might tell a story or to about how God defied the laws of science to answer their prayers. In fact, there’s a few of them out there who might even tell you a story about a miraculous jail break. That story would go something like this.
In Acts 4, Luke records that in the face of serious opposition, that the members of the early church responded by asking God to keep doing miraculous things He had been doing and to give them the boldness to keep talking about it. There was no hesitation on God’s part, He delivered above and beyond on both counts. Continuing the account in Acts 5, according to Luke, the Apostles were held in high esteem and were healing sick people who were brought to them. (There were lots of sick people, by the way.) As a result of this, the High Priest and those members of his party were filled with jealousy, (Luke’s words, not mine) and had the Apostles arrested and thrown into a public prison with the intent to put them on trial the next day. Now, it wasn’t the miracles, per se, that earned the High Priest’s ire but rather, it was the fact that the Apostles were doing these miracles in Jesus’ name, talking about His death and resurrection and what it meant regarding salvation and forgiveness of sin and, because the Sanhedrin was the governing body who was behind Jesus’ death, the Apostles were essentially putting Jesus’ blood on Sanhedrin’s hands. Granted, it was true, but still, the idea that these uneducated Galileans would have the gall to come out and say that publicly, made them a threat that the Sanhedrin was determined to stamp out by whatever means was necessary. Hence, the Sanhedrin had them arrested…. for all the good that would do them.
That night when everyone was asleep, an angel came into and opened the prison doors, brought the Apostles out, and told them to go to the Temple and at daybreak, proclaim the Gospel message to whoever would listen. In obedience, starting in the morning, the Apostles were proclaiming the Gospel message, that same message that Jesus had proclaimed, in the Temple courtyard.
Now about this same time, the Sanhedrin, being quite unaware that any of this had transpired, sent officers to get the Apostles out of the clink so they could interrogate them. Yeah, about that. When the officers arrived at the Temple jail, although the guards were outside the jail cell at their posts just as they were supposed to be, the jail cell was empty. Talk about having egg on their face. Houston, we have a problem. The captain of the Temple Guard now had to report to the Sanhedrin that they had lost their prisoners. That cell was locked all right and the guards were in place…guarding one very empty jail cell…. Well, this was embarrassing. Definitely NOT the Temple Guard’s finest hour. So much for getting this years’ annual performance bonuses. Seriously though, the authorities had absolutely no clue regarding what had happened to the Apostles nor their whereabouts until someone came and reported to them that the Apostles were teaching to a large crowd in the Temple.
The captain of the Temple Guard and a group of officers brought the Apostles peacefully back to be interrogated by the Sanhedrin where the Council essentially asked them why they insisted on teaching in Jesus’ name after they had been explicitly ordered not to. The Apostles’ answer was classic. Paraphrasing here, they said, “We can’t stop talking about what we’ve seen, especially since God told us to keep talking about it. With all due respect, gentlemen, we have to obey God rather than you. God raised Jesus, whom you killed, and exalted Him to God’s right hand and has made Him Savior of the world.”
Now, as you could expect, the Sanhedrin was ready to kill them. No, I’m not speaking metaphorically, I mean literally, the Sanhedrin was literally going to kill them. This was no joke. If God had not intervened again, the Apostles likely would have been executed. What God did though was to use a wise elderly man named Gamaliel, a Pharisee who was highly respected amongst all the people. This Gamaliel stood up and took the floor. He ordered the Apostles to be sent out of the room and then addressed the Sanhedrin. “Be careful with what you are about to do. If what these men are doing is merely a human endeavor, it will fail. But, if it is of God, if what they are doing is of God, it will be successful and nothing that you do will be able to stop it. In fact, you run the risk of finding yourselves fighting against God. My advice to you is to leave these men alone and just let things play out.” He added a couple of other details but that was the gist of what he said.
The Sanhedrin bought it. They took Gamaliel’s advice, brought in the Apostles, beat them and then charged them not teach in the name of Jesus ever again. The Apostles response was interesting. Rather than leaving in either defeat or defiance, they left rejoicing because they felt that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for Jesus’ name. And, according to Acts, they didn’t stop talking about Jesus but went both back to the Temple and to people’s residences, to whoever would listen, and told them what they knew.
So, what are we supposed to make of this? Does God still answer prayer like that? Based on stories that I have heard, testimonials throughout the ages, I would say that, yes, He does. History is full of true stories that fit within the confines of the definition of what we would call miracles. So, does that mean that we can ask for miracles and expect God to answer? I would say, yes, we can, especially when the prayer that we offer up is a prayer that is in line with God’s agenda. Think about it. What was the motive behind the prayer the early church offered up when they prayed that God would keep doing mighty works? Was it so that the Apostles would look good or so that God would look good? Their primary motivation behind these prayers was so that God would look good. Application question here. What is our motivation when we ask God to do something? Is it so that our agenda can be advanced or so that His agenda can be advanced? Look, God is gracious so sometimes I suspect that He will answer our prayers and give us what we ask for even if our motives are off base. Also, God is generous by nature so He loves to give good gifts to people who trust Him and ask Him for things to enjoy. He’s not stingy at all. But, when we specifically ask God for things that will give God glory and pray with that end in mind, God moves. Here’s an application prayer that God will answer all the time. “God, change my motives so that they line up with your motives. Change what I want in life so that it is identical to what you want in my life. You’re in charge.” That’s a dangerous prayer, a gutsy prayer, a prayer that takes a lot of courage to pray frankly, because what’s behind it is a personal surrender on our part to God. Using language from the Roach Place, we’re taking our personal agendas out behind the barn and shooting them in the head and replacing them with Jesus’ agenda. Simply stated, we’re embracing Jesus’ agenda as our own.
The second thing that we need to look at in this story as we are seeing how God answers prayer, is an aspect that is much more mundane but is nonetheless, more permanent, certainly more important than the miraculous jail break. I’m talking about the weight of the words of Gamaliel, the wise old Pharisee who managed to change the course of action that Sanhedrin was intending to take. We need to understand something about him. He was a Pharisee, a member of sect within the Sanhedrin that didn’t hold most of the political power at the time when this story took place. In terms of having political power within the context of that Council, Gamaliel didn’t have much. And yet, when it came to deliverance for the Apostles, what he did have was an enormous amount of influence so he was the one who God used to sway the opinion of the Sanhedrin to change their course of action so that they didn’t kill the Apostles. They settled on just beating them instead. Make no mistake about this. If Gamaliel had not spoken up, Acts 5 would probably have ended much differently. Here’s what I see folks, more often than not, God’s mighty power, God’s answer to prayer, is displayed in mundane events working within the confines of nature rather than in miraculous events that defy nature. And, thinking in terms of long-term outcomes here, Gamaliel’s advice changed the history of Christianity as we know it today. Because of him, the Apostles lived for another 30 to 40 years, providing essential ministry as the early church spread throughout the Roman Empire. If the Sanhedrin would have killed them at that time, while God is powerful enough to do anything, to spread the Gospel message throughout the world would have been much more difficult.
My take on this is that God works and answers prayer much more often within the confines of the mundane than He does in the explosions of the miraculous. In any case, the bottom line is this. God answers prayer especially when we line our agenda up with God’s agenda for our lives. So, here’s the question that we need to answer for ourselves. Have we lined up the agenda for our lives with God’s agenda for our lives? Or, put another way, whose agenda is the operating agenda in our lives? Is it our agenda or is it God’s? Jesus put it this way. “If anyone would come after Me (that is, follow me, identity with me, be my disciple) let him deny himself, pick up his cross daily and follow Me.” Luke 9:23 Notice here that to follow Jesus is a choice that must be made every day. Because of the nature of the beast, it really has to be the first decision that we make for ourselves everyday and, at times, it has to be renewed several times over the course of the day as life gives us its best shots designed to challenge that decision. I wish that it was different, but it isn’t.
Now to those of you who perhaps have never made that decision to follow Jesus, but you would like to, maybe this prayer is what expresses what you would like to say. “God, my agenda isn’t working and You and I both know it. God, I’m ready to make a change, right now. I’m ready to exchange my agenda for Your agenda. Take my life and do with it what You want to. Make the changes in my character and my motives that You need to make. I’m not going to fight You anymore but I’m going to cooperate with You. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for the penalty of my rebellion and that You have raised Him from the grave. I’m trusting you and you alone with my life. In Jesus name. Amen.”
If you want to talk more about this, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, for all of my readers, next week in this series we’ll take a look at the way that God actually answered the prayer of that early church that we talked about last week. See you then.
The reason it works is because of who I and others have been praying to. His name is God and He has revealed Himself to people both within the pages of a book commonly known as the Bible and, to a small group of people, He came down to earth as man who we know as Jesus. And yes, speaking from personal experience, He does answer prayer. I know this because I can point to a consistent pattern of answered prayers in my own life where albeit quietly often, God showed up big.
The early church though, if asked that question, might give a little different answer than me. Like me, they would emphatically say that, yes, prayer works, however, their evidence to support their answer might just be a little bit different from mine. You see, they would tell story after story of how God showed up in big and powerful ways. They might tell a story or to about how God defied the laws of science to answer their prayers. In fact, there’s a few of them out there who might even tell you a story about a miraculous jail break. That story would go something like this.
In Acts 4, Luke records that in the face of serious opposition, that the members of the early church responded by asking God to keep doing miraculous things He had been doing and to give them the boldness to keep talking about it. There was no hesitation on God’s part, He delivered above and beyond on both counts. Continuing the account in Acts 5, according to Luke, the Apostles were held in high esteem and were healing sick people who were brought to them. (There were lots of sick people, by the way.) As a result of this, the High Priest and those members of his party were filled with jealousy, (Luke’s words, not mine) and had the Apostles arrested and thrown into a public prison with the intent to put them on trial the next day. Now, it wasn’t the miracles, per se, that earned the High Priest’s ire but rather, it was the fact that the Apostles were doing these miracles in Jesus’ name, talking about His death and resurrection and what it meant regarding salvation and forgiveness of sin and, because the Sanhedrin was the governing body who was behind Jesus’ death, the Apostles were essentially putting Jesus’ blood on Sanhedrin’s hands. Granted, it was true, but still, the idea that these uneducated Galileans would have the gall to come out and say that publicly, made them a threat that the Sanhedrin was determined to stamp out by whatever means was necessary. Hence, the Sanhedrin had them arrested…. for all the good that would do them.
That night when everyone was asleep, an angel came into and opened the prison doors, brought the Apostles out, and told them to go to the Temple and at daybreak, proclaim the Gospel message to whoever would listen. In obedience, starting in the morning, the Apostles were proclaiming the Gospel message, that same message that Jesus had proclaimed, in the Temple courtyard.
Now about this same time, the Sanhedrin, being quite unaware that any of this had transpired, sent officers to get the Apostles out of the clink so they could interrogate them. Yeah, about that. When the officers arrived at the Temple jail, although the guards were outside the jail cell at their posts just as they were supposed to be, the jail cell was empty. Talk about having egg on their face. Houston, we have a problem. The captain of the Temple Guard now had to report to the Sanhedrin that they had lost their prisoners. That cell was locked all right and the guards were in place…guarding one very empty jail cell…. Well, this was embarrassing. Definitely NOT the Temple Guard’s finest hour. So much for getting this years’ annual performance bonuses. Seriously though, the authorities had absolutely no clue regarding what had happened to the Apostles nor their whereabouts until someone came and reported to them that the Apostles were teaching to a large crowd in the Temple.
The captain of the Temple Guard and a group of officers brought the Apostles peacefully back to be interrogated by the Sanhedrin where the Council essentially asked them why they insisted on teaching in Jesus’ name after they had been explicitly ordered not to. The Apostles’ answer was classic. Paraphrasing here, they said, “We can’t stop talking about what we’ve seen, especially since God told us to keep talking about it. With all due respect, gentlemen, we have to obey God rather than you. God raised Jesus, whom you killed, and exalted Him to God’s right hand and has made Him Savior of the world.”
Now, as you could expect, the Sanhedrin was ready to kill them. No, I’m not speaking metaphorically, I mean literally, the Sanhedrin was literally going to kill them. This was no joke. If God had not intervened again, the Apostles likely would have been executed. What God did though was to use a wise elderly man named Gamaliel, a Pharisee who was highly respected amongst all the people. This Gamaliel stood up and took the floor. He ordered the Apostles to be sent out of the room and then addressed the Sanhedrin. “Be careful with what you are about to do. If what these men are doing is merely a human endeavor, it will fail. But, if it is of God, if what they are doing is of God, it will be successful and nothing that you do will be able to stop it. In fact, you run the risk of finding yourselves fighting against God. My advice to you is to leave these men alone and just let things play out.” He added a couple of other details but that was the gist of what he said.
The Sanhedrin bought it. They took Gamaliel’s advice, brought in the Apostles, beat them and then charged them not teach in the name of Jesus ever again. The Apostles response was interesting. Rather than leaving in either defeat or defiance, they left rejoicing because they felt that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for Jesus’ name. And, according to Acts, they didn’t stop talking about Jesus but went both back to the Temple and to people’s residences, to whoever would listen, and told them what they knew.
So, what are we supposed to make of this? Does God still answer prayer like that? Based on stories that I have heard, testimonials throughout the ages, I would say that, yes, He does. History is full of true stories that fit within the confines of the definition of what we would call miracles. So, does that mean that we can ask for miracles and expect God to answer? I would say, yes, we can, especially when the prayer that we offer up is a prayer that is in line with God’s agenda. Think about it. What was the motive behind the prayer the early church offered up when they prayed that God would keep doing mighty works? Was it so that the Apostles would look good or so that God would look good? Their primary motivation behind these prayers was so that God would look good. Application question here. What is our motivation when we ask God to do something? Is it so that our agenda can be advanced or so that His agenda can be advanced? Look, God is gracious so sometimes I suspect that He will answer our prayers and give us what we ask for even if our motives are off base. Also, God is generous by nature so He loves to give good gifts to people who trust Him and ask Him for things to enjoy. He’s not stingy at all. But, when we specifically ask God for things that will give God glory and pray with that end in mind, God moves. Here’s an application prayer that God will answer all the time. “God, change my motives so that they line up with your motives. Change what I want in life so that it is identical to what you want in my life. You’re in charge.” That’s a dangerous prayer, a gutsy prayer, a prayer that takes a lot of courage to pray frankly, because what’s behind it is a personal surrender on our part to God. Using language from the Roach Place, we’re taking our personal agendas out behind the barn and shooting them in the head and replacing them with Jesus’ agenda. Simply stated, we’re embracing Jesus’ agenda as our own.
The second thing that we need to look at in this story as we are seeing how God answers prayer, is an aspect that is much more mundane but is nonetheless, more permanent, certainly more important than the miraculous jail break. I’m talking about the weight of the words of Gamaliel, the wise old Pharisee who managed to change the course of action that Sanhedrin was intending to take. We need to understand something about him. He was a Pharisee, a member of sect within the Sanhedrin that didn’t hold most of the political power at the time when this story took place. In terms of having political power within the context of that Council, Gamaliel didn’t have much. And yet, when it came to deliverance for the Apostles, what he did have was an enormous amount of influence so he was the one who God used to sway the opinion of the Sanhedrin to change their course of action so that they didn’t kill the Apostles. They settled on just beating them instead. Make no mistake about this. If Gamaliel had not spoken up, Acts 5 would probably have ended much differently. Here’s what I see folks, more often than not, God’s mighty power, God’s answer to prayer, is displayed in mundane events working within the confines of nature rather than in miraculous events that defy nature. And, thinking in terms of long-term outcomes here, Gamaliel’s advice changed the history of Christianity as we know it today. Because of him, the Apostles lived for another 30 to 40 years, providing essential ministry as the early church spread throughout the Roman Empire. If the Sanhedrin would have killed them at that time, while God is powerful enough to do anything, to spread the Gospel message throughout the world would have been much more difficult.
My take on this is that God works and answers prayer much more often within the confines of the mundane than He does in the explosions of the miraculous. In any case, the bottom line is this. God answers prayer especially when we line our agenda up with God’s agenda for our lives. So, here’s the question that we need to answer for ourselves. Have we lined up the agenda for our lives with God’s agenda for our lives? Or, put another way, whose agenda is the operating agenda in our lives? Is it our agenda or is it God’s? Jesus put it this way. “If anyone would come after Me (that is, follow me, identity with me, be my disciple) let him deny himself, pick up his cross daily and follow Me.” Luke 9:23 Notice here that to follow Jesus is a choice that must be made every day. Because of the nature of the beast, it really has to be the first decision that we make for ourselves everyday and, at times, it has to be renewed several times over the course of the day as life gives us its best shots designed to challenge that decision. I wish that it was different, but it isn’t.
Now to those of you who perhaps have never made that decision to follow Jesus, but you would like to, maybe this prayer is what expresses what you would like to say. “God, my agenda isn’t working and You and I both know it. God, I’m ready to make a change, right now. I’m ready to exchange my agenda for Your agenda. Take my life and do with it what You want to. Make the changes in my character and my motives that You need to make. I’m not going to fight You anymore but I’m going to cooperate with You. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for the penalty of my rebellion and that You have raised Him from the grave. I’m trusting you and you alone with my life. In Jesus name. Amen.”
If you want to talk more about this, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, for all of my readers, next week in this series we’ll take a look at the way that God actually answered the prayer of that early church that we talked about last week. See you then.
Part 12: Answered Prayer, Stephen’s Stoning
Two weeks ago, we unpacked the idea that God can and does answer prayer and this week I want to take a deeper dive into that truth. The easiest way is to simply continue with the story as Luke recorded it. In Acts 6 and 7 further proof is given that God does answer prayer and that He does keep His word. Here’s the rub though. It also provides clear evidence that God’s answers to our prayers don’t always fit into neat little packages and they often don’t look like we expect them to look.
Let me give you an illustration from the New York Times Best Seller, Adventures In Parenting 201, 2nd Edition, a book that should have been written by some out of work mother with an attitude sometime in the past fifty years regarding what this might look like. (Am I just making this one up? Maybe I am…and maybe I’m not…Google it and get back to me.) Reading from page 167, or 176, or 671, you pick the page, Karen or Suzie or whatever her name is, writes, “Parents have you ever had to give one of your kids a Christmas present in a plain brown paper bag because it had too many corners to effectively be wrapped like a normal present, or worse yet, because you ran out of both wrapping paper and gift bags at the same time? And you didn’t find all of this out until 2AM on December 25th and your kids were going to be up in five hours tops. And…as if that wasn’t enough, the story that was already just a bit off, took another turn. It was the gift, yeah, the actual gift in the brown paper bag. It was kind of what they asked for, would work out really well as time went on but at the time when they received it the timing of it just seemed off and, if the kid receiving the gift was the middle child, well …. they looked at you and, knowing full well that this wasn’t exactly what they’d asked for, and after that really awkward long pause said, ‘Uh…thanks…’ And you’re whispering to your husband who is looking at you like you’ve lost your mind again, ‘Honey, he’s in the middle of a perpetual growth spurt. Six months down the road, it will fit him just fine. Trust me.’” (For the record, the parents reading this know exactly what the author is talking about because trust me, there isn’t a parent alive who hasn’t either been in this situation or someday will be in this situation.) And, coming back to the topic of answered prayer, Acts 6 and 7 is kind of like that. The answer to prayer didn’t exactly look like the early church thought that it would but, it would work out in the end. Let’s sink our teeth into it and chew on it for a bit.
Specifically, these two chapters in Acts are Luke’s account of the death of Stephen and are an answer to a lot of prayers, but we have to think outside of the box a bit to see it. To begin, let’s go back to Acts 1:8 where Jesus told His followers just before He ascended into heaven that they would be witnesses. Remember the definition of that word, the Greek word martus? It can mean witness like in a courtroom but, when it’s used in the New Testament, it also can, and in fact usually does, mean being a martyr. Now, up to this point, whenever any members of the church had been brought before the Sanhedrin, God had miraculously intervened and spared their lives. This time was different though. This time, for the first time in church history, someone from the church was called upon to state the truth of who Jesus was and then make the ultimate sacrifice. They were asked to forfeit their lives. And the first person who God asked to do this was not to one of the Apostles, but rather a convert who was possibly from somewhere else besides Jerusalem, a man known in the Bible as Stephen.
Stephen first entered Acts as one of a group of seven men chosen by the church to oversee the distribution of food to the widows within the church. (A fairly sizeable number of women so it would appear.) Now, by nature of the beast, Stephen had to have been a decent administrator but Luke tells us that he was more than just that. He was also a first-class orator who was filled with the Holy Spirit. Luke records that he was offering convincing proofs that Jesus was the Messiah and when his opponents couldn’t match his oratory skills, they beat him the old-fashioned way. They lied about him which led to his arrest.
What transpired next were events that were fit for a prime-time courtroom drama on Netflix. According to eyewitnesses, as Stephen was being questioned, his face glowed like that of an angel. For the record, I don’t think that Luke was speaking figuratively here, I think he was speaking literally and I don’t think that he was making it up either. Think about it. Acts is one of those books that archeology confirms as being historically accurate time and again. If Luke wasn’t wrong on those accounts, do we have any reason to believe that he’s wrong here? To take that position is kind of like betting the farm when you have an average hand at best against an opponent’s pair of kings with an ace high showing in a game of five card stud. I don’t care how good you can bluff; you just don’t do it and you don’t bet against Luke either. Now, it’s just my opinion, certainly open to debate, but I think that Luke’s source on this one was the Apostle Paul. If Paul wasn’t in the room when all of this went down, he knew the people who were and they certainly would have told him, (Paul) about it.
Now as far as trials are concerned, this was not a fair trial. The Sanhedrin wanted Stephen eliminated permanently and their plan was to give Stephen enough rope in hopes that he would hang himself. He didn’t disappoint. The difference in this case however was that Stephen didn’t get caught in a lie, he condemned his audience with the truth. Without going into a lot of detail, what he did was point out that the members of the Sanhedrin were acting just their forefathers had by resisting the Holy Spirit and mistreating and killing the prophets. They were enraged and then, knowing exactly how this would end regardless of what he said, Luke records that Stephen lifted his eyes to heaven and said, “I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” That statement pushed the council over the top. When He had been on earth, one of Jesus’ favorite titles for Himself was, the Son of Man, so they knew exactly who Stephen was talking about and also that by placing Jesus at the right hand of God that he was ascribing Deity to Him.
What followed was something that can best be described as a combination of mob action and a lynching except they used large rocks instead of a rope and a horse to do the deed. They cast him out of the city and then stoned him.
Now the witnesses who were stoning Stephen lay their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul and proceeded with the execution. In the final moments of his life, Stephen’s true colors shone like a beacon in the darkness. As the rocks struck him mercilessly, Stephen looked to heaven and made two prayer requests. The first should come as no surprise. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” The second, however, should raise some eyebrows, because it wasn’t what we might typically expect. Instead of calling for his death to be avenged, he prayed for his executioners. “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
“Do not hold this sin against them.” Those were his final words before he died. And you know what? God answered his prayer. And, God didn’t just answer that prayer, He answered the prayer that was prayed in the previous chapter as well when the early church prayed for boldness to present the truth.
Stephen exhibited great boldness and courage both as he debated with his opponents in the Temple that led to arrest and in the way that he gave an answer to the Sanhedrin, knowing full well that it would probably cost him his life. This boldness that he displayed wasn’t just human courage, it came from the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. Yes, in Acts 4, the early church asked for boldness and God delivered the goods. Stephen was proof.
Moving to Stephen’s prayer requests, Stephen first asked Jesus to receive his spirit. Considering how he died, we have to assume that God answered that prayer.
And then there was Stephen’s final prayer request, “do not hold this sin against them.” God answered that one too, at least for one person. Listen, Luke never threw in random details in his writing just to fill up space on a parchment. No, everything had a purpose and so did his mention of who was watching the coats of the people who were executing Stephen. He said that it was a young man named Saul who was doing that. Let me tell you a bit about that young man. His name was Saul and he was from a town in the Roman Empire called Tarsus. He was sharp, incredibly sharp. He was one of Gamaliel’s prize disciples, an up-and-coming star, destined for a leadership role in the Sanhedrin.
Now Saul hated Christians. He saw them as blasphemers and their movement had to be stamped out. In the upcoming months after Stephen’s death, Saul would arrest as many Christians as he could and have them killed if possible. In spite of the fact that he was an enemy of the early church however, God would get a hold of this young man when he was on the road to Damascus to arrest more Christians and convince him that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. (I’ll tell you about that story another time. Let’s just say for now that it wasn’t your typical day at the office for Saul and leave it at that.) Saul would end up flipping sides and much of the second half of Acts would be about his ministry. Oh yeah, and he would change his name too. He would take the Greek form of his name. He would be called Paul. Yeah, as in the Apostle Paul, the guy who wrote over half of the New Testament. My point here though is this. Although there were other factors involved too, God’s sovereignty for example, in part as an answer to Stephen’s prayer, God did not hold Stephen’s death against Saul but instead granted him mercy, mercy that would lead him to the truth and essentially change his life forever.
So, what is in this story that we can apply for our own lives?
The first thing to note is that God’s answer to prayer doesn’t always look like what our answer would to those same prayers would be if the roles were reversed and we were God. (For the record, there is a God and we are not Him…fortunately.) You see, there’s this verse in Romans where Paul wrote, “all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) It doesn’t say that all things are good, just that they work together for good, the idea being that God will often just play the hand He’s dealt and make chicken salad out of the chicken manure. That’s not to say that things won’t get nasty in the process, they often do, it’s just saying that God will find a way to bring some good out of any situation if we have the faith to pray about it.
The second thing to note is that making the decision to follow Jesus is not an easy thing to do. When Jesus was on earth, again and again He promised people that if they followed Him that they would be persecuted for identifying with Him. “You will be hated by everyone because of my name.” (Mark 13:13) “Then they will deliver you over to be persecuted and killed, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.” (Matthew 24:9) “Whoever wants to be my disciple must take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) What Jesus told His disciples was to expect persecution. Stephen’s experience was not an aberration, rather, it was the norm. And, for my American readers especially, it’s still the norm all over the world. It just hasn’t been our experience for the past probably four centuries but those days could be coming to an end.
Lastly, look at how Stephen responded to all of this. He didn’t retaliate as the rocks were flying at him, he responded by praying for the people who were executing him. He acted like Jesus. Notice how he didn’t compromise or back down from telling the truth, but he did forgive and pray for those people who were persecuting him. (Fact check moment here. So did Jesus on the cross. Luke 23:34) Yes, Stephen acted like Jesus when all of this was happening. That’s something that we should remember if any of us are being criticized for taking a Christian stand these days. And, for any of my readers who want to take the position that what’s happening to us today is different from what happened to Jesus and Stephen, I happen to agree with you. Our circumstances are different from theirs. We aren’t being crucified or stoned. The bottom line is that Stephen put Jesus’ agenda ahead of his own and, he put the well-being of his enemies ahead of his own. Hear me out on this. If Stephen had kept his mouth shut or compromised his message, he would have probably lived but lives wouldn’t have been changed either. Saul would never have become Paul, for example and he would have probably died years later as a religious man condemned to hell because he never became a Jesus follower. Here’s my point, Stephen saw his accusers and executioners as people who needed to repent and follow Jesus. He knew the mission that Jesus had charged anyone who would follow Him with so he submitted to Jesus’ will and left the consequences of that decision entirely in God’s hands. As I see it, we must do the same thing.
So, what’s involved if a person today were to decide to follow Jesus? If we were to ask Stephen, he would tell us this. The first thing that we have to do is to repent, that is, change our way of thinking. At that point we would ask him to elaborate which would be a valid question. He might explain it to us like this. At the time of Stephen’s death, the members of the early church, himself included, were primarily talking to people who had grown up just as he had, within the framework of the Jewish religion. Now, at the risk of oversimplification, Judaism was a religion that taught all humanity had rebelled against God which had estranged people from God, (true) and in order to make things right, to be reconciled to God, according to Judaism, a person had to follow the Mosaic Law and offer animal sacrifices to God for their sins as they called them. (Also true…until just recently when Jesus arrived on the scene.) After that, Stephen would argue, the animal sacrifices were no longer necessary or even sufficient anymore because Jesus had been the ultimate sacrifice, He had fulfilled the Mosaic Law perfectly. He had paid the penalty for our rebellion and God was satisfied with that payment. He would also tell you that whoever wanted to apply that payment to their life, could do so. He would tell you that you could do that by placing your faith in Jesus’ death on the cross and in Jesus’ resurrection from the grave.
But what about our good deeds, we might ask. Don’t they count for anything in God’s economy? Stephen would tell you that it doesn’t matter how many good things a person does in their life, without placing one’s faith in Jesus, it won’t be enough to make things right. He would tell you that, as far as God is concerned, it isn’t a deal where if at the end of your life, if you have more good deeds than bad deeds that you will be good to go based on the idea that the number of good deeds you have done in your life have outnumbered the bad deeds in your life. No, Stephen would tell you shaking his head, that wouldn’t be enough because the only thing that God the Father will accept is absolute perfection and the only one who ever lived a perfect life was Jesus. So what a person has to do, according to Stephen, would be to believe that Jesus was Lord to the point that you are not ashamed to tell people that’s what you have done, that includes believing that He’s God in the flesh, turn your life over to God to the best of your ability and believe that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead. It’s all about realizing that this thing the Bible calls salvation is a gift from God to us offered by His grace and us responding in faith to receive that gift.
But, Stephen, was it worth it, we ask? Was following Jesus, worth it? He might give us that, “are you kidding me,” look. “Yes, it was worth it.” He’d say. “Everyone dies eventually, and when I took my stand for Him, Jesus stood and honored me for what I was doing. And, when I took my last breath, He received me into His presence. I’m alive and in heaven. Yes, it was worth it. It was the best decision that I ever made.”
So, there you have it. To follow Jesus requires us placing our faith in Jesus. Typically, the best way to do that is through prayer. Tell God what you want to do in simple English. He knows your desires so He’ll understand what you are trying to say. If you want to talk more about this, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you.
Let me give you an illustration from the New York Times Best Seller, Adventures In Parenting 201, 2nd Edition, a book that should have been written by some out of work mother with an attitude sometime in the past fifty years regarding what this might look like. (Am I just making this one up? Maybe I am…and maybe I’m not…Google it and get back to me.) Reading from page 167, or 176, or 671, you pick the page, Karen or Suzie or whatever her name is, writes, “Parents have you ever had to give one of your kids a Christmas present in a plain brown paper bag because it had too many corners to effectively be wrapped like a normal present, or worse yet, because you ran out of both wrapping paper and gift bags at the same time? And you didn’t find all of this out until 2AM on December 25th and your kids were going to be up in five hours tops. And…as if that wasn’t enough, the story that was already just a bit off, took another turn. It was the gift, yeah, the actual gift in the brown paper bag. It was kind of what they asked for, would work out really well as time went on but at the time when they received it the timing of it just seemed off and, if the kid receiving the gift was the middle child, well …. they looked at you and, knowing full well that this wasn’t exactly what they’d asked for, and after that really awkward long pause said, ‘Uh…thanks…’ And you’re whispering to your husband who is looking at you like you’ve lost your mind again, ‘Honey, he’s in the middle of a perpetual growth spurt. Six months down the road, it will fit him just fine. Trust me.’” (For the record, the parents reading this know exactly what the author is talking about because trust me, there isn’t a parent alive who hasn’t either been in this situation or someday will be in this situation.) And, coming back to the topic of answered prayer, Acts 6 and 7 is kind of like that. The answer to prayer didn’t exactly look like the early church thought that it would but, it would work out in the end. Let’s sink our teeth into it and chew on it for a bit.
Specifically, these two chapters in Acts are Luke’s account of the death of Stephen and are an answer to a lot of prayers, but we have to think outside of the box a bit to see it. To begin, let’s go back to Acts 1:8 where Jesus told His followers just before He ascended into heaven that they would be witnesses. Remember the definition of that word, the Greek word martus? It can mean witness like in a courtroom but, when it’s used in the New Testament, it also can, and in fact usually does, mean being a martyr. Now, up to this point, whenever any members of the church had been brought before the Sanhedrin, God had miraculously intervened and spared their lives. This time was different though. This time, for the first time in church history, someone from the church was called upon to state the truth of who Jesus was and then make the ultimate sacrifice. They were asked to forfeit their lives. And the first person who God asked to do this was not to one of the Apostles, but rather a convert who was possibly from somewhere else besides Jerusalem, a man known in the Bible as Stephen.
Stephen first entered Acts as one of a group of seven men chosen by the church to oversee the distribution of food to the widows within the church. (A fairly sizeable number of women so it would appear.) Now, by nature of the beast, Stephen had to have been a decent administrator but Luke tells us that he was more than just that. He was also a first-class orator who was filled with the Holy Spirit. Luke records that he was offering convincing proofs that Jesus was the Messiah and when his opponents couldn’t match his oratory skills, they beat him the old-fashioned way. They lied about him which led to his arrest.
What transpired next were events that were fit for a prime-time courtroom drama on Netflix. According to eyewitnesses, as Stephen was being questioned, his face glowed like that of an angel. For the record, I don’t think that Luke was speaking figuratively here, I think he was speaking literally and I don’t think that he was making it up either. Think about it. Acts is one of those books that archeology confirms as being historically accurate time and again. If Luke wasn’t wrong on those accounts, do we have any reason to believe that he’s wrong here? To take that position is kind of like betting the farm when you have an average hand at best against an opponent’s pair of kings with an ace high showing in a game of five card stud. I don’t care how good you can bluff; you just don’t do it and you don’t bet against Luke either. Now, it’s just my opinion, certainly open to debate, but I think that Luke’s source on this one was the Apostle Paul. If Paul wasn’t in the room when all of this went down, he knew the people who were and they certainly would have told him, (Paul) about it.
Now as far as trials are concerned, this was not a fair trial. The Sanhedrin wanted Stephen eliminated permanently and their plan was to give Stephen enough rope in hopes that he would hang himself. He didn’t disappoint. The difference in this case however was that Stephen didn’t get caught in a lie, he condemned his audience with the truth. Without going into a lot of detail, what he did was point out that the members of the Sanhedrin were acting just their forefathers had by resisting the Holy Spirit and mistreating and killing the prophets. They were enraged and then, knowing exactly how this would end regardless of what he said, Luke records that Stephen lifted his eyes to heaven and said, “I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” That statement pushed the council over the top. When He had been on earth, one of Jesus’ favorite titles for Himself was, the Son of Man, so they knew exactly who Stephen was talking about and also that by placing Jesus at the right hand of God that he was ascribing Deity to Him.
What followed was something that can best be described as a combination of mob action and a lynching except they used large rocks instead of a rope and a horse to do the deed. They cast him out of the city and then stoned him.
Now the witnesses who were stoning Stephen lay their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul and proceeded with the execution. In the final moments of his life, Stephen’s true colors shone like a beacon in the darkness. As the rocks struck him mercilessly, Stephen looked to heaven and made two prayer requests. The first should come as no surprise. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” The second, however, should raise some eyebrows, because it wasn’t what we might typically expect. Instead of calling for his death to be avenged, he prayed for his executioners. “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
“Do not hold this sin against them.” Those were his final words before he died. And you know what? God answered his prayer. And, God didn’t just answer that prayer, He answered the prayer that was prayed in the previous chapter as well when the early church prayed for boldness to present the truth.
Stephen exhibited great boldness and courage both as he debated with his opponents in the Temple that led to arrest and in the way that he gave an answer to the Sanhedrin, knowing full well that it would probably cost him his life. This boldness that he displayed wasn’t just human courage, it came from the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. Yes, in Acts 4, the early church asked for boldness and God delivered the goods. Stephen was proof.
Moving to Stephen’s prayer requests, Stephen first asked Jesus to receive his spirit. Considering how he died, we have to assume that God answered that prayer.
And then there was Stephen’s final prayer request, “do not hold this sin against them.” God answered that one too, at least for one person. Listen, Luke never threw in random details in his writing just to fill up space on a parchment. No, everything had a purpose and so did his mention of who was watching the coats of the people who were executing Stephen. He said that it was a young man named Saul who was doing that. Let me tell you a bit about that young man. His name was Saul and he was from a town in the Roman Empire called Tarsus. He was sharp, incredibly sharp. He was one of Gamaliel’s prize disciples, an up-and-coming star, destined for a leadership role in the Sanhedrin.
Now Saul hated Christians. He saw them as blasphemers and their movement had to be stamped out. In the upcoming months after Stephen’s death, Saul would arrest as many Christians as he could and have them killed if possible. In spite of the fact that he was an enemy of the early church however, God would get a hold of this young man when he was on the road to Damascus to arrest more Christians and convince him that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. (I’ll tell you about that story another time. Let’s just say for now that it wasn’t your typical day at the office for Saul and leave it at that.) Saul would end up flipping sides and much of the second half of Acts would be about his ministry. Oh yeah, and he would change his name too. He would take the Greek form of his name. He would be called Paul. Yeah, as in the Apostle Paul, the guy who wrote over half of the New Testament. My point here though is this. Although there were other factors involved too, God’s sovereignty for example, in part as an answer to Stephen’s prayer, God did not hold Stephen’s death against Saul but instead granted him mercy, mercy that would lead him to the truth and essentially change his life forever.
So, what is in this story that we can apply for our own lives?
The first thing to note is that God’s answer to prayer doesn’t always look like what our answer would to those same prayers would be if the roles were reversed and we were God. (For the record, there is a God and we are not Him…fortunately.) You see, there’s this verse in Romans where Paul wrote, “all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) It doesn’t say that all things are good, just that they work together for good, the idea being that God will often just play the hand He’s dealt and make chicken salad out of the chicken manure. That’s not to say that things won’t get nasty in the process, they often do, it’s just saying that God will find a way to bring some good out of any situation if we have the faith to pray about it.
The second thing to note is that making the decision to follow Jesus is not an easy thing to do. When Jesus was on earth, again and again He promised people that if they followed Him that they would be persecuted for identifying with Him. “You will be hated by everyone because of my name.” (Mark 13:13) “Then they will deliver you over to be persecuted and killed, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.” (Matthew 24:9) “Whoever wants to be my disciple must take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) What Jesus told His disciples was to expect persecution. Stephen’s experience was not an aberration, rather, it was the norm. And, for my American readers especially, it’s still the norm all over the world. It just hasn’t been our experience for the past probably four centuries but those days could be coming to an end.
Lastly, look at how Stephen responded to all of this. He didn’t retaliate as the rocks were flying at him, he responded by praying for the people who were executing him. He acted like Jesus. Notice how he didn’t compromise or back down from telling the truth, but he did forgive and pray for those people who were persecuting him. (Fact check moment here. So did Jesus on the cross. Luke 23:34) Yes, Stephen acted like Jesus when all of this was happening. That’s something that we should remember if any of us are being criticized for taking a Christian stand these days. And, for any of my readers who want to take the position that what’s happening to us today is different from what happened to Jesus and Stephen, I happen to agree with you. Our circumstances are different from theirs. We aren’t being crucified or stoned. The bottom line is that Stephen put Jesus’ agenda ahead of his own and, he put the well-being of his enemies ahead of his own. Hear me out on this. If Stephen had kept his mouth shut or compromised his message, he would have probably lived but lives wouldn’t have been changed either. Saul would never have become Paul, for example and he would have probably died years later as a religious man condemned to hell because he never became a Jesus follower. Here’s my point, Stephen saw his accusers and executioners as people who needed to repent and follow Jesus. He knew the mission that Jesus had charged anyone who would follow Him with so he submitted to Jesus’ will and left the consequences of that decision entirely in God’s hands. As I see it, we must do the same thing.
So, what’s involved if a person today were to decide to follow Jesus? If we were to ask Stephen, he would tell us this. The first thing that we have to do is to repent, that is, change our way of thinking. At that point we would ask him to elaborate which would be a valid question. He might explain it to us like this. At the time of Stephen’s death, the members of the early church, himself included, were primarily talking to people who had grown up just as he had, within the framework of the Jewish religion. Now, at the risk of oversimplification, Judaism was a religion that taught all humanity had rebelled against God which had estranged people from God, (true) and in order to make things right, to be reconciled to God, according to Judaism, a person had to follow the Mosaic Law and offer animal sacrifices to God for their sins as they called them. (Also true…until just recently when Jesus arrived on the scene.) After that, Stephen would argue, the animal sacrifices were no longer necessary or even sufficient anymore because Jesus had been the ultimate sacrifice, He had fulfilled the Mosaic Law perfectly. He had paid the penalty for our rebellion and God was satisfied with that payment. He would also tell you that whoever wanted to apply that payment to their life, could do so. He would tell you that you could do that by placing your faith in Jesus’ death on the cross and in Jesus’ resurrection from the grave.
But what about our good deeds, we might ask. Don’t they count for anything in God’s economy? Stephen would tell you that it doesn’t matter how many good things a person does in their life, without placing one’s faith in Jesus, it won’t be enough to make things right. He would tell you that, as far as God is concerned, it isn’t a deal where if at the end of your life, if you have more good deeds than bad deeds that you will be good to go based on the idea that the number of good deeds you have done in your life have outnumbered the bad deeds in your life. No, Stephen would tell you shaking his head, that wouldn’t be enough because the only thing that God the Father will accept is absolute perfection and the only one who ever lived a perfect life was Jesus. So what a person has to do, according to Stephen, would be to believe that Jesus was Lord to the point that you are not ashamed to tell people that’s what you have done, that includes believing that He’s God in the flesh, turn your life over to God to the best of your ability and believe that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead. It’s all about realizing that this thing the Bible calls salvation is a gift from God to us offered by His grace and us responding in faith to receive that gift.
But, Stephen, was it worth it, we ask? Was following Jesus, worth it? He might give us that, “are you kidding me,” look. “Yes, it was worth it.” He’d say. “Everyone dies eventually, and when I took my stand for Him, Jesus stood and honored me for what I was doing. And, when I took my last breath, He received me into His presence. I’m alive and in heaven. Yes, it was worth it. It was the best decision that I ever made.”
So, there you have it. To follow Jesus requires us placing our faith in Jesus. Typically, the best way to do that is through prayer. Tell God what you want to do in simple English. He knows your desires so He’ll understand what you are trying to say. If you want to talk more about this, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you.
Part 13: The Aftermath of Stephen’s Stoning
Last week we looked at Stephen’s execution by the Sanhedrin and for the next five or six weeks I want to look at the aftermath of that event because the fallout from it is still felt today. Now up to this point in church history, the church had experienced persecution but they had been able to tolerate it because, depending upon the circumstances, the Sanhedrin had either been curtailed by God and/or older members on the Council like Gamaliel who had advised restraint but now those days were gone. With Saul, the young man who had looked after the coats of the executioners while they were stoning Stephen leading the charge, Luke records in Acts 8:1 that a great persecution broke out against the church. Now the Greek word for persecution used here is an intense word and its literal meaning when used in this context means to go and hunt someone down like a dog, which clearly illuminates what was happening. Saul was going from house to house of known Jesus followers and arresting both men and women and dragging them off to prison. In response to this, with the exception of the apostles who stayed in Jerusalem, the church scattered, fleeing for their lives throughout Judea and Samaria and parts even farther away from Jerusalem than that.
Now as we examine these events, the question, especially for anyone who is paying attention, is what happened? This surely couldn’t have been the plan, was it? The answer to that just might surprise you. Actually, it was part of the plan. In fact, it was a crucial part of the plan. Let me explain.
Sometimes God will allow bad things to happen in order to set things up so He can bring good out of it. To illustrate what this looks like, let’s go to another part of the Bible and examine an event from Israel’s history that took place approximately 2000 years prior to Stephen’s stoning. It’s found in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, where a man named Joseph when he was 17, was sold to a group of Egyptian slave traders by his brothers who were jealous of him because of the favoritism that his father showed toward him.
What transpired to Joseph after that can only be described as a nightmare. Once in Egypt, Joseph was purchased by a prominent military leader and because of his competence in administration, became a trusted slave to his master. In fact, his master put Joseph in charge of running his entire house because Joseph was that competent an administrator. Then life went south because while Joseph was extremely proficient at his job, he was also handsome and he caught the attention of his master’s wife who attempted to seduce him. When he turned her down, in her ire for being rebuffed, she lied about him to her husband and got him thrown into prison where he remained for at least ten years.
He probably would have stayed there for the rest of his life except that God had other plans. You see, along with being gifted by God with administrative competence, God had also given him the ability to interpret dreams and one of the people who he ended up interpreting a dream for was Pharoah, the ruler of Egypt. Now, as a result of this, because of the nature of Pharoah’s dream and the advice that Joseph gave him, Pharoah made Joseph Prime Minister of Egypt with the assignment of preparing Egypt to be able to survive a famine that God had indicated in Pharoah’s dream was coming.
Seven years after Joseph had become Prime Minister, that famine did occur just as Joseph predicted that it would and two years later, that same famine had spread into Joseph’s homeland. In danger of starvation, Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt looking to buy food. Guess who they had to buy it from. Joseph. What irony. The same kid who they had sold into slavery twenty years prior was now arguably the 2nd most powerful man in Egypt. Uh huh, that’s a lot of power at his fingertips.
They didn’t recognize him at first when he sold them the grain, however, but eventually he revealed his identity to his brothers and brought down his entire family, including their father to Egypt where he kept them alive. Fast forward a few years though and, after their father died, Joseph’s brothers were afraid that with their father now gone that Joseph would have his revenge. Proactively they came before him, begging for their lives. Joseph had an entirely different response from what they were expecting though. He said, “You intended to harm me but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.”
So, what happened? Joseph, it would seem, had learned an important principle during those years in prison where he earned his Masters Degree in humility and faith at the University of Hard Knocks. He’d come to recognize that God was in control of everything and could and would take even the worst events that were intended for evil and flip them for good.
Fast forward 2000 years and that’s also what happened with the early church. You see, even as those people were scattered and fleeing for their lives, something else was going on as well. Everywhere they went, they spread the news that Jesus was the Messiah that had been prophesied about for millennia. These people went to places like Cypress and Antioch. They went into Samaria. One of them introduced the Gospel message to a high ranking official in the Ethiopian court. Peter introduced the Gospel message to the Gentiles. And Saul, the guy who was hunting down Christians like they were dogs? Well, in his case, the hunter became the hunted and Jesus Himself would confront him, and, instead of killing him would convert him and Saul ended up being a major player in the early church.
Here’s the thing though. None of this would have happened without the execution of Stephen. If Stephen wouldn’t have been executed, the persecution wouldn’t have happened and odds are pretty good that many of the members of that early church who were forced to flee would have remained in Jerusalem, delaying the spread of the Gospel message to other parts of the Roman Empire for at least four decades. And Saul, the guy who would end up writing at least a third of the New Testament? Who knows if he even would ever have converted to Christianity? One can only speculate frankly. So, what are the takeaways for us in 2023? There’s three big ones that just pop off the page.
First, even when life is just going to hell in a handbasket, when life is spiraling out of control and life altering events are the order of the day, God is still in control. When that job loss happens, when that ugly diagnosis gets delivered or when that tragedy strikes, God is still in control. In fact, not only is He still in control but, if we choose to trust Him no matter what, He’s big enough to bring good out of the worst set of circumstances ever. He loves us and He’s working for our good. We may not see it right now and it may not look like it’s making any sense but we still would do well to trust that He knows what He’s doing. Our response therefore should be to act in faith and trust Him.
Second, God often has to use circumstantial discomfort and duress to get us to move in the direction that He wants us to move. Face it, we like comfort and while in and of itself, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, often comfort will keep us from doing what God has called us to do and that is a problem. Guys, when God wants to use us somewhere else besides where we currently are, it’s generally not a comfortable process to get us to where we need to be but it is necessary because we won’t move otherwise. For any number of reasons that run the entire gamut ranging from legitimate reasons to illegitimate excuses, we’re not going anywhere either figuratively or literally, until adverse circumstances, like a job loss for example, forces us to. That’s what happened with the early church in Acts. Most of those people didn’t leave Jerusalem until Saul’s persecution forced them to.
Lastly, and this is for those of you reading this who aren’t Jesus followers, sometimes God has to use discomfort and discontentment to get people to turn to Him. Sometimes it looks like this. You periodically take stock of your life and, after you evaluate it, you find that aren’t happy with the way it’s going so you try to fix it. However, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, you don’t seem to be able to fix anything. In fact, sometimes it looks like things are just getting worse instead of better. You unsuccessfully switch up all the variables and, no matter what you try, the only constant in your life is that somehow, all roads seem to be leading back to Jesus. It’s maddening. You look in the mirror and ask if all roads in life somehow end up bringing you back face to face with Jesus? Truthfully, in your case…maybe. When He’s calling someone to change their life and follow Jesus, God can be relentless like that.
Or maybe it looks like this. Your life is going good until, all of a sudden, your significant other meets a Jesus follower, or worse yet, a bunch of Jesus followers and they become one too. What happens next is that their life starts to change and you realize that you’re going to have to figure out what’s going on because your relationship with them is different now and it’s probably never going to be like it was so you’re going to have to figure out exactly who this Jesus is just so you can navigate the new terrain. And that’s when things might get even more uncomfortable because even if you like the way that your significant other is changing, they might actually be nicer to you, for example, you’re finding yourself face to face with the truth of who Jesus is and you have a decision to make. You realize that you might have to acknowledge that some of the things that you have believed to be true for your entire life are wrong and now you have to decide if you are going to believe what the evidence tells you is true or stay in your comfort zone, which, just for the record, isn’t very comfortable anymore. Like the guy in the previous paragraph, you too find yourself standing face to face with Jesus. Welcome to the jungle. Except…and here’s the kicker, unlike most of the big uglies who inhabit most jungles, this Jesus seems to be really kind, unlike anyone you’ve ever encountered. On the flip side though, He is also the embodiment of truth and as you face Him, you find yourself seeing yourself as you really are, whether you like it or not. What further complicates things though is that Jesus is also gracious and loving, more loving than anyone you’ve ever met and that’s what makes it so hard because He doesn’t seem to be deterred by your faults. If Jesus was like everyone else out there, it would be easy. You could just flip Him off and be done with it. He’s not like everyone else however and that’s what makes it so awkward. The bottom line is that as you face Jesus you are really uncomfortable and that will probably continue until you decide what you are going to do with Him. So, what are you going to do with Jesus?
Frankly, you only have two options. The first is to turn Him down and hope that He goes away and just leaves you alone. Be careful with that one by the way, because He just might do it. He actually might go away and leave you alone. Here’s the rub though. Jesus might go away but the troublesome feeling won’t. Blaise Pascal said it like this. “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every [person] which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” You’ll try and fill that God shaped hole with stuff, with work, with relationships, with you name it, but it will never go away, not permanently anyway. There will always be something missing. It’s the nature of the beast.
Or you can choose the second option. You can choose to surrender and follow Jesus. Now, I won’t lie to you and tell you that if you follow Jesus that your life will necessarily be easier because it may not be. It wasn’t for the early church. Directly as a result of their decision to follow Jesus, their lives got just plain hard. In their case, the personal suffering they experienced was a direct consequence of their decision to identify as a follower of Jesus. It’s a principle that’s still in play even now. Today, in 2023, in many parts of the world, people who choose to follow Jesus pay dearly for that decision. Take for example, what happens to Christians in North Korea. North Korean prisons are full of people who are imprisoned simply because they love and follow Jesus.
Now, for those of you living in the United States, my guess is that the consequences for following Jesus won’t be that extreme, but there still might be adverse consequences ranging from ended friendships to lost opportunities at your job. In addition, there might be some consequences that will actually be good for you because if you choose to follow Jesus, over time as God works and changes you. You will find that you have an inner ability to do things that comes only from God Himself. Personally, since I have chosen to follow Jesus, I have found that I have the ability now to forgive people from my past who I used to hate, justifiably if I was honest about it, because I was bullied in junior high and part of high school. However, as a result of allowing Jesus access to my thoughts and motives I have been able to let go of grudges that festered within me for years. Now honestly, that didn’t come naturally or easily. What has happened though is that when I surrendered those thoughts and emotions to God, He began working within me to change me and make me like Himself. Was it an easy process, no. Was it a long process, yes. But I am different today than I was before because Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, changed me or actually is still changing me from the inside out and making me more like Himself at the character and motive level.
So, what’s involved in choosing to follow Jesus? Surrendering to Jesus is both a one-time event and a life-long process. It’s a one-time event in that it has a beginning point. There’s typically an event, often a quiet event just between a person and God, where the person admits to God that they have done things that they know are wrong, thought thoughts that know are wrong and have been motivated by selfish desires to do things, even good things but for selfish reasons and all of this is offensive to God. (To use religious terminology, a person admits that they have sinned because that’s just who they are. It’s their nature.) The person also comes to that point where they agree with God that because of God’s holy nature those offenses have consequences that include spending eternity separated from God in a place the Bible calls hell. However, the person also agrees with God that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, God in human flesh, lived a completely sinless life and willingly took the consequences for that rebellion upon Himself by dying on the cross and that God the Father raised Jesus from the grave on the third day. Basically, a person makes a decision to place their trust and faith in Jesus and surrender their lives to Jesus’ leadership because they realize they can’t save themselves. That’s the one-time event and it’s usually marked by prayer where a person communicates to God in their own words that they are desiring to do this. The life-long process of the equation is the daily surrender and submission to Jesus’ leadership and allowing God, through the power of the Holy Spirit to change a person’s thoughts and motives and therefore their character so that they resemble Jesus more and more each day. (Not always an easy process if I’m honest.)
If you either want to make that decision or have made that decision and want to talk more about this, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, I’ll see you next week.
Now as we examine these events, the question, especially for anyone who is paying attention, is what happened? This surely couldn’t have been the plan, was it? The answer to that just might surprise you. Actually, it was part of the plan. In fact, it was a crucial part of the plan. Let me explain.
Sometimes God will allow bad things to happen in order to set things up so He can bring good out of it. To illustrate what this looks like, let’s go to another part of the Bible and examine an event from Israel’s history that took place approximately 2000 years prior to Stephen’s stoning. It’s found in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, where a man named Joseph when he was 17, was sold to a group of Egyptian slave traders by his brothers who were jealous of him because of the favoritism that his father showed toward him.
What transpired to Joseph after that can only be described as a nightmare. Once in Egypt, Joseph was purchased by a prominent military leader and because of his competence in administration, became a trusted slave to his master. In fact, his master put Joseph in charge of running his entire house because Joseph was that competent an administrator. Then life went south because while Joseph was extremely proficient at his job, he was also handsome and he caught the attention of his master’s wife who attempted to seduce him. When he turned her down, in her ire for being rebuffed, she lied about him to her husband and got him thrown into prison where he remained for at least ten years.
He probably would have stayed there for the rest of his life except that God had other plans. You see, along with being gifted by God with administrative competence, God had also given him the ability to interpret dreams and one of the people who he ended up interpreting a dream for was Pharoah, the ruler of Egypt. Now, as a result of this, because of the nature of Pharoah’s dream and the advice that Joseph gave him, Pharoah made Joseph Prime Minister of Egypt with the assignment of preparing Egypt to be able to survive a famine that God had indicated in Pharoah’s dream was coming.
Seven years after Joseph had become Prime Minister, that famine did occur just as Joseph predicted that it would and two years later, that same famine had spread into Joseph’s homeland. In danger of starvation, Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt looking to buy food. Guess who they had to buy it from. Joseph. What irony. The same kid who they had sold into slavery twenty years prior was now arguably the 2nd most powerful man in Egypt. Uh huh, that’s a lot of power at his fingertips.
They didn’t recognize him at first when he sold them the grain, however, but eventually he revealed his identity to his brothers and brought down his entire family, including their father to Egypt where he kept them alive. Fast forward a few years though and, after their father died, Joseph’s brothers were afraid that with their father now gone that Joseph would have his revenge. Proactively they came before him, begging for their lives. Joseph had an entirely different response from what they were expecting though. He said, “You intended to harm me but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.”
So, what happened? Joseph, it would seem, had learned an important principle during those years in prison where he earned his Masters Degree in humility and faith at the University of Hard Knocks. He’d come to recognize that God was in control of everything and could and would take even the worst events that were intended for evil and flip them for good.
Fast forward 2000 years and that’s also what happened with the early church. You see, even as those people were scattered and fleeing for their lives, something else was going on as well. Everywhere they went, they spread the news that Jesus was the Messiah that had been prophesied about for millennia. These people went to places like Cypress and Antioch. They went into Samaria. One of them introduced the Gospel message to a high ranking official in the Ethiopian court. Peter introduced the Gospel message to the Gentiles. And Saul, the guy who was hunting down Christians like they were dogs? Well, in his case, the hunter became the hunted and Jesus Himself would confront him, and, instead of killing him would convert him and Saul ended up being a major player in the early church.
Here’s the thing though. None of this would have happened without the execution of Stephen. If Stephen wouldn’t have been executed, the persecution wouldn’t have happened and odds are pretty good that many of the members of that early church who were forced to flee would have remained in Jerusalem, delaying the spread of the Gospel message to other parts of the Roman Empire for at least four decades. And Saul, the guy who would end up writing at least a third of the New Testament? Who knows if he even would ever have converted to Christianity? One can only speculate frankly. So, what are the takeaways for us in 2023? There’s three big ones that just pop off the page.
First, even when life is just going to hell in a handbasket, when life is spiraling out of control and life altering events are the order of the day, God is still in control. When that job loss happens, when that ugly diagnosis gets delivered or when that tragedy strikes, God is still in control. In fact, not only is He still in control but, if we choose to trust Him no matter what, He’s big enough to bring good out of the worst set of circumstances ever. He loves us and He’s working for our good. We may not see it right now and it may not look like it’s making any sense but we still would do well to trust that He knows what He’s doing. Our response therefore should be to act in faith and trust Him.
Second, God often has to use circumstantial discomfort and duress to get us to move in the direction that He wants us to move. Face it, we like comfort and while in and of itself, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, often comfort will keep us from doing what God has called us to do and that is a problem. Guys, when God wants to use us somewhere else besides where we currently are, it’s generally not a comfortable process to get us to where we need to be but it is necessary because we won’t move otherwise. For any number of reasons that run the entire gamut ranging from legitimate reasons to illegitimate excuses, we’re not going anywhere either figuratively or literally, until adverse circumstances, like a job loss for example, forces us to. That’s what happened with the early church in Acts. Most of those people didn’t leave Jerusalem until Saul’s persecution forced them to.
Lastly, and this is for those of you reading this who aren’t Jesus followers, sometimes God has to use discomfort and discontentment to get people to turn to Him. Sometimes it looks like this. You periodically take stock of your life and, after you evaluate it, you find that aren’t happy with the way it’s going so you try to fix it. However, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, you don’t seem to be able to fix anything. In fact, sometimes it looks like things are just getting worse instead of better. You unsuccessfully switch up all the variables and, no matter what you try, the only constant in your life is that somehow, all roads seem to be leading back to Jesus. It’s maddening. You look in the mirror and ask if all roads in life somehow end up bringing you back face to face with Jesus? Truthfully, in your case…maybe. When He’s calling someone to change their life and follow Jesus, God can be relentless like that.
Or maybe it looks like this. Your life is going good until, all of a sudden, your significant other meets a Jesus follower, or worse yet, a bunch of Jesus followers and they become one too. What happens next is that their life starts to change and you realize that you’re going to have to figure out what’s going on because your relationship with them is different now and it’s probably never going to be like it was so you’re going to have to figure out exactly who this Jesus is just so you can navigate the new terrain. And that’s when things might get even more uncomfortable because even if you like the way that your significant other is changing, they might actually be nicer to you, for example, you’re finding yourself face to face with the truth of who Jesus is and you have a decision to make. You realize that you might have to acknowledge that some of the things that you have believed to be true for your entire life are wrong and now you have to decide if you are going to believe what the evidence tells you is true or stay in your comfort zone, which, just for the record, isn’t very comfortable anymore. Like the guy in the previous paragraph, you too find yourself standing face to face with Jesus. Welcome to the jungle. Except…and here’s the kicker, unlike most of the big uglies who inhabit most jungles, this Jesus seems to be really kind, unlike anyone you’ve ever encountered. On the flip side though, He is also the embodiment of truth and as you face Him, you find yourself seeing yourself as you really are, whether you like it or not. What further complicates things though is that Jesus is also gracious and loving, more loving than anyone you’ve ever met and that’s what makes it so hard because He doesn’t seem to be deterred by your faults. If Jesus was like everyone else out there, it would be easy. You could just flip Him off and be done with it. He’s not like everyone else however and that’s what makes it so awkward. The bottom line is that as you face Jesus you are really uncomfortable and that will probably continue until you decide what you are going to do with Him. So, what are you going to do with Jesus?
Frankly, you only have two options. The first is to turn Him down and hope that He goes away and just leaves you alone. Be careful with that one by the way, because He just might do it. He actually might go away and leave you alone. Here’s the rub though. Jesus might go away but the troublesome feeling won’t. Blaise Pascal said it like this. “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every [person] which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” You’ll try and fill that God shaped hole with stuff, with work, with relationships, with you name it, but it will never go away, not permanently anyway. There will always be something missing. It’s the nature of the beast.
Or you can choose the second option. You can choose to surrender and follow Jesus. Now, I won’t lie to you and tell you that if you follow Jesus that your life will necessarily be easier because it may not be. It wasn’t for the early church. Directly as a result of their decision to follow Jesus, their lives got just plain hard. In their case, the personal suffering they experienced was a direct consequence of their decision to identify as a follower of Jesus. It’s a principle that’s still in play even now. Today, in 2023, in many parts of the world, people who choose to follow Jesus pay dearly for that decision. Take for example, what happens to Christians in North Korea. North Korean prisons are full of people who are imprisoned simply because they love and follow Jesus.
Now, for those of you living in the United States, my guess is that the consequences for following Jesus won’t be that extreme, but there still might be adverse consequences ranging from ended friendships to lost opportunities at your job. In addition, there might be some consequences that will actually be good for you because if you choose to follow Jesus, over time as God works and changes you. You will find that you have an inner ability to do things that comes only from God Himself. Personally, since I have chosen to follow Jesus, I have found that I have the ability now to forgive people from my past who I used to hate, justifiably if I was honest about it, because I was bullied in junior high and part of high school. However, as a result of allowing Jesus access to my thoughts and motives I have been able to let go of grudges that festered within me for years. Now honestly, that didn’t come naturally or easily. What has happened though is that when I surrendered those thoughts and emotions to God, He began working within me to change me and make me like Himself. Was it an easy process, no. Was it a long process, yes. But I am different today than I was before because Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, changed me or actually is still changing me from the inside out and making me more like Himself at the character and motive level.
So, what’s involved in choosing to follow Jesus? Surrendering to Jesus is both a one-time event and a life-long process. It’s a one-time event in that it has a beginning point. There’s typically an event, often a quiet event just between a person and God, where the person admits to God that they have done things that they know are wrong, thought thoughts that know are wrong and have been motivated by selfish desires to do things, even good things but for selfish reasons and all of this is offensive to God. (To use religious terminology, a person admits that they have sinned because that’s just who they are. It’s their nature.) The person also comes to that point where they agree with God that because of God’s holy nature those offenses have consequences that include spending eternity separated from God in a place the Bible calls hell. However, the person also agrees with God that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, God in human flesh, lived a completely sinless life and willingly took the consequences for that rebellion upon Himself by dying on the cross and that God the Father raised Jesus from the grave on the third day. Basically, a person makes a decision to place their trust and faith in Jesus and surrender their lives to Jesus’ leadership because they realize they can’t save themselves. That’s the one-time event and it’s usually marked by prayer where a person communicates to God in their own words that they are desiring to do this. The life-long process of the equation is the daily surrender and submission to Jesus’ leadership and allowing God, through the power of the Holy Spirit to change a person’s thoughts and motives and therefore their character so that they resemble Jesus more and more each day. (Not always an easy process if I’m honest.)
If you either want to make that decision or have made that decision and want to talk more about this, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, I’ll see you next week.
Part 14: Acts 8: Us and Them
As we looked at Acts 7 last week, the two main consequences of Stephen’s execution were the ensuing persecution led by Saul against the early church and the rapid exodus of the early church from Jerusalem. Specifically, what that meant was that all known Jesus followers with the exception of the Apostles were running for their lives and fleeing from Jerusalem to wherever they could to escape. It was a grave situation, so grave that one of the deacons who had been appointed to oversee the distribution of food to the widows in Acts 6, Philip the evangelist, went to a place where no self-respecting Jew in their right mind would dare to go, Samaria. Now to understand why this is such a big deal, this going into Samaria business, because it’s less than 33 miles from Jerusalem, we need to dig into the backstory. Time for a Jewish history lesson. Class is now in session.
The story begins in 587 BC when the Babylonians, under Nebuchadnezzar, invaded the Kingdom of Judah as it was known as back then and conquered the nation. When the Babylonians overthrew Judah, as was their policy, they dispersed most of the Jewish population to other parts of the Babylonian Empire but they left behind a few of the elderly, the sick, and the poorest of the Jewish population to care for the land, especially the farm country north of Jerusalem in the region that would come to be known as Samaria. In addition, they also imported some Gentiles to come into the region and over the years after some intermarrying, a population in the region emerged that was half Jewish and half Gentile. These people were the ancestors of the people who, in Jesus’ time, would be referred to as the Samaritans.
Moving forward to the next century, when a Jewish remnant returned to Judea to reestablish the nation, albeit as a province of the Persian Empire, they rebuffed the ancestors of the Samaritans, referring to them as, “half-breeds,” and denied them access to the Temple when they rebuilt it. This move obviously offended the ancestors of the Samaritans and the feud was on. Over the years, the hard feelings grew as ethnic hatred just multiplied and festered. By Jesus’ lifetime, things had gotten so bad that the Jews would not go into Samaria and the Samaritans would not go into either Judea to the south or Galilee to the north. In fact, so serious was the animosity between the two groups that a common practice among the Jews at this time was that if a Jew living in Judea wanted to travel to Galilee which was located 90 miles north of Jerusalem, rather than go the easy route and just travel through Samaria, a straight shot, they would cross the Jordan river in Judea, go around Samaria and then cross the Jordan River again once they were far enough north to avoid going into Samaria. It probably added an extra 20 or 30 miles to the trip, kind of a big deal if one was traveling on foot.
Philip’s logic here was sound. Saul was a Jew and a devout Pharisee, so regardless of how much he hated Christians, there was absolutely no way that he was going to set foot in Samaria to hunt Philip down which meant Philip was not only safe but also free to preach the good news that the promised Messiah had come and that His name was Jesus, which is exactly what he did. He went to the capital city of the Province of Samaria, the city of Samaria and preached in the streets. (Yes, there was a city named Samaria in the region named Samaria.)
Now, while all of this makes for an interesting history lesson…or boring if you were one of those people who hated history in high school and slept in class, the thing that is especially appealing about it is what it reveals both about the heart of God for people, all people, regardless of their ethnicity and how absolutely brilliant God is when it comes to getting things done. Regarding God’s brilliance, while from our perspective, it’s obvious that the Samaritans needed salvation just the same as everyone else, what we might tend to miss is that perhaps the Apostles weren’t the best choice to initially bring them that message. This is speculation on my part but the Apostles were Hebrew Jews from Galilee and the Samaritans, who hated the Jews in many cases as much as the Jews hated them, would have picked right up on that. There would have been a barrier based on ethnic prejudice to overcome. However, with Philip, things were perhaps different. It’s entirely possible that that barrier didn’t exist, or if it did, it wasn’t as prominent and here’s why. The name Philip is a Greek name and, based on that, we can make some assumptions about him. He was probably what the people at the time would have called a Hellenistic Jew, or a Jewish person who wasn’t from Palestine but was rather from somewhere in Europe and more than likely, the Samaritans would have picked up on that as well. His accent would have given him away. They would have recognized that he was Jewish but maybe not a Galilean so there wasn’t the same level of hostility that there might have been otherwise. Furthermore, because it’s possible that he wasn’t originally from Judea or Galilee but rather from somewhere else in the Roman Empire, it’s not a reach to suggest that, unlike the Apostles who would have grown up having an adversarial relationship with people who weren’t Jewish, he was more used to rubbing shoulders with people who belonged to other ethnic groups. Added to this, the fact that he was an evangelist made him a perfect fit for the job and he didn’t disappoint either. Luke records later in the chapter that when the Apostles heard that the Samaritans had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John there to check things out. Yes, it’s pretty fair to assume that Philip must have had an effective ministry.
So, what do we make of all of this? There’re two things that especially stand out. The first is how we should properly respond to the genius of God and trust that He knows what He’s doing when He gives us a job to do that wouldn’t necessarily be our task of choice. God doesn’t make mistakes and sometimes we might find ourselves in situations that aren’t comfortable but we’re exactly where God wants us to be because of the job that needs to be done. Could God use someone else? Of course, but in God’s mind we’re a better fit than someone else. In fact, we might be the best fit for the job. Going back to Acts 8, consider this. Was Samaria Philip’s first choice for where he wanted to be or where he had originally planned to be? I doubt it but it certainly beat remaining in Jerusalem and getting thrown into jail or possibly stoned to death so Samaria it was. And, once he was there, he recognized that these Samaritans were people who needed to hear the Gospel message so he obeyed. You see, Philip recognized that since he had chosen to follow Jesus that the agenda that governed the affairs of his life was no longer his agenda, it was Jesus’ agenda. Jesus’ agenda was the primary operating agenda in his life. As we examine this, there’s a question we need to ask ourselves. Whose agenda is the primary operating agenda in our lives? Is it Jesus’ agenda or is it our agenda? As we conduct our daily affairs, that’s an important question that we all need to field, one that we don’t dare blow off because, for many of us, we’re at a crossroads in our life and the answer to that question will determine our legacy.
The second thing that stands out about this story is what it reveals about the heart of God and how different His heart is from our heart. You see, when we look at people we come across in our daily comings and goings, we tend to divide people into two categories. We see them as either being in the, “us,” category if they are like us, or we see them as being in the, “them,” category if they aren’t like us. Now the criteria for what makes these people an “us” or a “them” varies according to each individual, according to their personal tastes or hot button. For some of us, the criteria centers around ethnicity, for others it’s political, for others it’s the level of education or economic affluence, for others it’s religion, and still, for others it’s whether or not that other person is a Dallas Cowboys fan. Like I said, it varies from person to person but the bottom line is that we all have our us group and we also have our them group and the problem is, especially when it comes to God’s agenda and our role in fulfilling the Great Commission, it can become a dealbreaker for how we go about trying to obey God in this matter. And, what’s especially convicting here is that we know that God isn’t like that at all. He doesn’t differentiate like we do and we are all too aware that if we are going to follow Jesus, we can’t differentiate like that anymore either. If we are going to follow Jesus, we are going to have to start thinking like He thinks, and that includes not only how we see the other people in our world but ourselves as well, especially as it relates to the important decisions in life.
So, how does God see the world? Does He have an “us” group and a “them” group? Yes, He does, but His approach to determining who is and “us” and who is a “them” is much different than ours. In the first place, his criterion has nothing to do with the superficial criteria that we have set up. Based on how Jesus lived, God rejects those criteria outright. And secondly, His desire in the end is that when it comes to this matter of us and them as it relates to Him, He wants there to be no them, just us. To use a religious term, God wants to reconcile a hostile world, a world that is them, to Himself and He’s working 24/7 to accomplish that.
What I mean is this. In the first place, in God’s opinion, and His opinion is the only one that matters here, when it comes to things that really count in eternity regarding this issue of hostility and reconciliation, unless God intercedes, the entire human race is all in the same group. Left to our own devices, in relation to God, while God is in His own “us” group or “in” group, we would find ourselves in the “them,” group, the “out” group and there’s not a darn thing that we can do about it. You see, there’s an absolute standard that one must meet to have a right standing with God and we don’t meet it. We never have and, on our own, we never will. Specifically, we’ve been god in our life, we’ve set up our own standards for morality and when our standard was at odds with God’s standard, we’ve won and God was relegated to a back seat. In the Bible, this is called sin and its consequences are devastating. Paul, in Romans 6:23, put it like this, “For the wages, (or the consequences,) of sin is death. (Eternal separation from God.)” Summarizing our plight, God is absolutely holy and we aren’t. We have willingly violated His moral code, and God has stated from cover to cover in the book that we call the Bible that unless we are as holy as He is, that based on our own merits, we can’t be in His presence. That, my friends, in this conversation about us and them and how it all relates to God, puts us squarely in the “them” category.
Fortunately for us, in spite of all of this, God loves us, unconditionally and provided a perfect savior for us, who DID do everything right which makes Him sinless, who IS absolutely holy based on His OWN merits and who DID take the punishment we rightfully deserved so that we don’t have to if we choose to accept Him as our savior and follow Him. Yeah, Jesus. He’s put this amazing offer on the table. He took the consequences of our rebellion on Himself and is offering to give us His holiness if we will choose to change our thinking, accept Him as savior and follow Him.
So, coming back to the us and them discussion, for those of us who are followers of Jesus, we gotta remember something and it should be burned into our very souls. When it comes to the people we come in contact with, there is no “them,” out there, it’s just “us,” and we all need a savior. We all need Jesus if we want to be in a right standing with God. There’s a line in a Jars of Clay song, We Are the Body, that goes like this. “Jesus paid much too high a price that we should pick and choose who should come.” They are spot on. When it comes to standards that we use to determine who is us and who is them, we had better do some real soul searching and decide if whatever dividing line that we’ve set up is really a hill that’s worth dying on.
Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not saying that we need to water down our message especially when it comes to repentance and surrendering to the authority of Jesus in all areas of our lives. We can’t. If we do, we’re presenting a false narrative. Nor am I saying that we shouldn’t take a stand for the truth of who Jesus is and what His death and resurrection means. Nor am I saying that we should compromise the truth of the Gospel message as it relates to current moral and ethical issues. Stating the truth in love, the early church stood their ground on moral and ethical issues, aligning their stance with what was written in the Old Testament because Jesus is Lord and that was what He did repeatedly. However, as they took their stand, the early church never forgot where they came from and what their eternal destiny would have been had they not had an encounter with Jesus.
Keeping that thought in mind then, what I am saying is that we too, like those first century Jesus followers, should never forget that, except that we placed our faith in Jesus and surrendered our lives to His authority, that we would be in the same boat as everyone else. We would also do well to remember that we did nothing to earn our right standing with God and that everyone we come in contact with is loved by God and His desire is to bring them into the same right relationship with Him that we enjoy. That’s His agenda by the way and, coming back to that messy topic of agendas and surrender, once again, I pose the uncomfortable question, whose agenda are we promoting in our lives…really and how can we tell?
This is just a candid observation on my part and open to debate I suppose, but it seems to me that our operating agendas are often revealed in the way that we treat people who we perceive as being different from us, those people who are the “thems” in our life. Do we treat the thems like Jesus treats them or do we retaliate and treat them like they treat us? Yes, Jesus had harsh words for people sometimes but have you ever looked at who those people were? They were religious and self-righteous people, the church going people, the people who we might be tempted to call “us”. Look at the Gospel accounts. Jesus was seldom harsh with the irreligious riffraff and “sinners” but He would run out of patience with the self-righteous, self-serving, hypocrites. And even then, considering what He could have done, He was God after all, His responses were tempered, and it was only in response to their hypocrisy. And, when asked about His agenda, His answer was that He had not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. He also said that He had come to seek and to save the lost. If we claim to be following Jesus, that has to be our agenda too.
What I want to do in the next couple of weeks is to examine the rest of Acts 8 and take a good look at one of the texts that Philip actually used to present the Gospel message because it will take us to a perspective of Jesus’ message that we don’t always look at. See you then.
As always, if you want to talk more about this, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, I’ll see you next week.
The story begins in 587 BC when the Babylonians, under Nebuchadnezzar, invaded the Kingdom of Judah as it was known as back then and conquered the nation. When the Babylonians overthrew Judah, as was their policy, they dispersed most of the Jewish population to other parts of the Babylonian Empire but they left behind a few of the elderly, the sick, and the poorest of the Jewish population to care for the land, especially the farm country north of Jerusalem in the region that would come to be known as Samaria. In addition, they also imported some Gentiles to come into the region and over the years after some intermarrying, a population in the region emerged that was half Jewish and half Gentile. These people were the ancestors of the people who, in Jesus’ time, would be referred to as the Samaritans.
Moving forward to the next century, when a Jewish remnant returned to Judea to reestablish the nation, albeit as a province of the Persian Empire, they rebuffed the ancestors of the Samaritans, referring to them as, “half-breeds,” and denied them access to the Temple when they rebuilt it. This move obviously offended the ancestors of the Samaritans and the feud was on. Over the years, the hard feelings grew as ethnic hatred just multiplied and festered. By Jesus’ lifetime, things had gotten so bad that the Jews would not go into Samaria and the Samaritans would not go into either Judea to the south or Galilee to the north. In fact, so serious was the animosity between the two groups that a common practice among the Jews at this time was that if a Jew living in Judea wanted to travel to Galilee which was located 90 miles north of Jerusalem, rather than go the easy route and just travel through Samaria, a straight shot, they would cross the Jordan river in Judea, go around Samaria and then cross the Jordan River again once they were far enough north to avoid going into Samaria. It probably added an extra 20 or 30 miles to the trip, kind of a big deal if one was traveling on foot.
Philip’s logic here was sound. Saul was a Jew and a devout Pharisee, so regardless of how much he hated Christians, there was absolutely no way that he was going to set foot in Samaria to hunt Philip down which meant Philip was not only safe but also free to preach the good news that the promised Messiah had come and that His name was Jesus, which is exactly what he did. He went to the capital city of the Province of Samaria, the city of Samaria and preached in the streets. (Yes, there was a city named Samaria in the region named Samaria.)
Now, while all of this makes for an interesting history lesson…or boring if you were one of those people who hated history in high school and slept in class, the thing that is especially appealing about it is what it reveals both about the heart of God for people, all people, regardless of their ethnicity and how absolutely brilliant God is when it comes to getting things done. Regarding God’s brilliance, while from our perspective, it’s obvious that the Samaritans needed salvation just the same as everyone else, what we might tend to miss is that perhaps the Apostles weren’t the best choice to initially bring them that message. This is speculation on my part but the Apostles were Hebrew Jews from Galilee and the Samaritans, who hated the Jews in many cases as much as the Jews hated them, would have picked right up on that. There would have been a barrier based on ethnic prejudice to overcome. However, with Philip, things were perhaps different. It’s entirely possible that that barrier didn’t exist, or if it did, it wasn’t as prominent and here’s why. The name Philip is a Greek name and, based on that, we can make some assumptions about him. He was probably what the people at the time would have called a Hellenistic Jew, or a Jewish person who wasn’t from Palestine but was rather from somewhere in Europe and more than likely, the Samaritans would have picked up on that as well. His accent would have given him away. They would have recognized that he was Jewish but maybe not a Galilean so there wasn’t the same level of hostility that there might have been otherwise. Furthermore, because it’s possible that he wasn’t originally from Judea or Galilee but rather from somewhere else in the Roman Empire, it’s not a reach to suggest that, unlike the Apostles who would have grown up having an adversarial relationship with people who weren’t Jewish, he was more used to rubbing shoulders with people who belonged to other ethnic groups. Added to this, the fact that he was an evangelist made him a perfect fit for the job and he didn’t disappoint either. Luke records later in the chapter that when the Apostles heard that the Samaritans had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John there to check things out. Yes, it’s pretty fair to assume that Philip must have had an effective ministry.
So, what do we make of all of this? There’re two things that especially stand out. The first is how we should properly respond to the genius of God and trust that He knows what He’s doing when He gives us a job to do that wouldn’t necessarily be our task of choice. God doesn’t make mistakes and sometimes we might find ourselves in situations that aren’t comfortable but we’re exactly where God wants us to be because of the job that needs to be done. Could God use someone else? Of course, but in God’s mind we’re a better fit than someone else. In fact, we might be the best fit for the job. Going back to Acts 8, consider this. Was Samaria Philip’s first choice for where he wanted to be or where he had originally planned to be? I doubt it but it certainly beat remaining in Jerusalem and getting thrown into jail or possibly stoned to death so Samaria it was. And, once he was there, he recognized that these Samaritans were people who needed to hear the Gospel message so he obeyed. You see, Philip recognized that since he had chosen to follow Jesus that the agenda that governed the affairs of his life was no longer his agenda, it was Jesus’ agenda. Jesus’ agenda was the primary operating agenda in his life. As we examine this, there’s a question we need to ask ourselves. Whose agenda is the primary operating agenda in our lives? Is it Jesus’ agenda or is it our agenda? As we conduct our daily affairs, that’s an important question that we all need to field, one that we don’t dare blow off because, for many of us, we’re at a crossroads in our life and the answer to that question will determine our legacy.
The second thing that stands out about this story is what it reveals about the heart of God and how different His heart is from our heart. You see, when we look at people we come across in our daily comings and goings, we tend to divide people into two categories. We see them as either being in the, “us,” category if they are like us, or we see them as being in the, “them,” category if they aren’t like us. Now the criteria for what makes these people an “us” or a “them” varies according to each individual, according to their personal tastes or hot button. For some of us, the criteria centers around ethnicity, for others it’s political, for others it’s the level of education or economic affluence, for others it’s religion, and still, for others it’s whether or not that other person is a Dallas Cowboys fan. Like I said, it varies from person to person but the bottom line is that we all have our us group and we also have our them group and the problem is, especially when it comes to God’s agenda and our role in fulfilling the Great Commission, it can become a dealbreaker for how we go about trying to obey God in this matter. And, what’s especially convicting here is that we know that God isn’t like that at all. He doesn’t differentiate like we do and we are all too aware that if we are going to follow Jesus, we can’t differentiate like that anymore either. If we are going to follow Jesus, we are going to have to start thinking like He thinks, and that includes not only how we see the other people in our world but ourselves as well, especially as it relates to the important decisions in life.
So, how does God see the world? Does He have an “us” group and a “them” group? Yes, He does, but His approach to determining who is and “us” and who is a “them” is much different than ours. In the first place, his criterion has nothing to do with the superficial criteria that we have set up. Based on how Jesus lived, God rejects those criteria outright. And secondly, His desire in the end is that when it comes to this matter of us and them as it relates to Him, He wants there to be no them, just us. To use a religious term, God wants to reconcile a hostile world, a world that is them, to Himself and He’s working 24/7 to accomplish that.
What I mean is this. In the first place, in God’s opinion, and His opinion is the only one that matters here, when it comes to things that really count in eternity regarding this issue of hostility and reconciliation, unless God intercedes, the entire human race is all in the same group. Left to our own devices, in relation to God, while God is in His own “us” group or “in” group, we would find ourselves in the “them,” group, the “out” group and there’s not a darn thing that we can do about it. You see, there’s an absolute standard that one must meet to have a right standing with God and we don’t meet it. We never have and, on our own, we never will. Specifically, we’ve been god in our life, we’ve set up our own standards for morality and when our standard was at odds with God’s standard, we’ve won and God was relegated to a back seat. In the Bible, this is called sin and its consequences are devastating. Paul, in Romans 6:23, put it like this, “For the wages, (or the consequences,) of sin is death. (Eternal separation from God.)” Summarizing our plight, God is absolutely holy and we aren’t. We have willingly violated His moral code, and God has stated from cover to cover in the book that we call the Bible that unless we are as holy as He is, that based on our own merits, we can’t be in His presence. That, my friends, in this conversation about us and them and how it all relates to God, puts us squarely in the “them” category.
Fortunately for us, in spite of all of this, God loves us, unconditionally and provided a perfect savior for us, who DID do everything right which makes Him sinless, who IS absolutely holy based on His OWN merits and who DID take the punishment we rightfully deserved so that we don’t have to if we choose to accept Him as our savior and follow Him. Yeah, Jesus. He’s put this amazing offer on the table. He took the consequences of our rebellion on Himself and is offering to give us His holiness if we will choose to change our thinking, accept Him as savior and follow Him.
So, coming back to the us and them discussion, for those of us who are followers of Jesus, we gotta remember something and it should be burned into our very souls. When it comes to the people we come in contact with, there is no “them,” out there, it’s just “us,” and we all need a savior. We all need Jesus if we want to be in a right standing with God. There’s a line in a Jars of Clay song, We Are the Body, that goes like this. “Jesus paid much too high a price that we should pick and choose who should come.” They are spot on. When it comes to standards that we use to determine who is us and who is them, we had better do some real soul searching and decide if whatever dividing line that we’ve set up is really a hill that’s worth dying on.
Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not saying that we need to water down our message especially when it comes to repentance and surrendering to the authority of Jesus in all areas of our lives. We can’t. If we do, we’re presenting a false narrative. Nor am I saying that we shouldn’t take a stand for the truth of who Jesus is and what His death and resurrection means. Nor am I saying that we should compromise the truth of the Gospel message as it relates to current moral and ethical issues. Stating the truth in love, the early church stood their ground on moral and ethical issues, aligning their stance with what was written in the Old Testament because Jesus is Lord and that was what He did repeatedly. However, as they took their stand, the early church never forgot where they came from and what their eternal destiny would have been had they not had an encounter with Jesus.
Keeping that thought in mind then, what I am saying is that we too, like those first century Jesus followers, should never forget that, except that we placed our faith in Jesus and surrendered our lives to His authority, that we would be in the same boat as everyone else. We would also do well to remember that we did nothing to earn our right standing with God and that everyone we come in contact with is loved by God and His desire is to bring them into the same right relationship with Him that we enjoy. That’s His agenda by the way and, coming back to that messy topic of agendas and surrender, once again, I pose the uncomfortable question, whose agenda are we promoting in our lives…really and how can we tell?
This is just a candid observation on my part and open to debate I suppose, but it seems to me that our operating agendas are often revealed in the way that we treat people who we perceive as being different from us, those people who are the “thems” in our life. Do we treat the thems like Jesus treats them or do we retaliate and treat them like they treat us? Yes, Jesus had harsh words for people sometimes but have you ever looked at who those people were? They were religious and self-righteous people, the church going people, the people who we might be tempted to call “us”. Look at the Gospel accounts. Jesus was seldom harsh with the irreligious riffraff and “sinners” but He would run out of patience with the self-righteous, self-serving, hypocrites. And even then, considering what He could have done, He was God after all, His responses were tempered, and it was only in response to their hypocrisy. And, when asked about His agenda, His answer was that He had not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. He also said that He had come to seek and to save the lost. If we claim to be following Jesus, that has to be our agenda too.
What I want to do in the next couple of weeks is to examine the rest of Acts 8 and take a good look at one of the texts that Philip actually used to present the Gospel message because it will take us to a perspective of Jesus’ message that we don’t always look at. See you then.
As always, if you want to talk more about this, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, I’ll see you next week.
Part 15: Acts 8: The Exchange
One of the things that stands out to anyone who takes the time to study God and do a careful examination of how He operates is the continuity and consistency of the things that are written in the Bible. For example, there are things that are written in the Old Testament, predicting future events several centuries before the life of Christ, that have their fulfillment during the life of Christ. The second half of Acts 8 provides a perfect demonstration of what this looks like.
Once again, the main player in the second part of Acts 8 is Philip. As you recall, picking up our story from last week, Philip was in Samaria when Luke records that the Lord instructed him to go back into Judea, south of Jerusalem to the desert road that ran from Jerusalem to Gaza. Philip didn’t know why he was supposed to go there, only that he was supposed to and so, that’s what he did.
When his feet hit the cobble heading to Gaza, he came upon this man sitting in his carriage who happened to be the treasurer of the Kingdom of Ethiopia, a eunuch with great authority. The man was reading aloud from the Old Testament book of Isaiah.
As he neared the carriage, Philip asked. “Do you understand what you are reading?”
I suspect that the eunuch set the scroll down, and just threw up his hands as he turned to Philip. “How can I unless someone instructs me?”
Luke doesn’t tell us what exactly Philip said but, in the conversation that followed, the treasurer invited Philip to come into the carriage and explain to him who that Old Testament passage was talking about and how that applied to him. For the next hour or so probably, Philip used the passage that the man had been reading to give him a concise explanation of the message of Jesus. In the end, the eunuch believed and was baptized as an expression of his newfound faith.
One of the things that drove my study of Acts this past winter was I would often look past just the obvious and try to fill in the gaps between the main points. As I would read various passages, I would try and speculate as to what the finer details might be in them and this passage definitely lent itself to do that because Luke gave us the starting point. According to Luke, the two verses from Isaiah that the eunuch was reading when Philip came upon him was Isaiah 53: 7 and 8, a passage that had been written 700 years prior but was, none-the-less, all about Jesus. Let’s dive into it.
“He was oppressed and treated harshly yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb led to slaughter. As a sheep is silent before its shearers, he did not open his mouth.” This lamb analogy was an analogy that both Isaiah’s readers would have been quite familiar with and the Ethiopian would have been familiar with as well. Dating back to the time when Moses was given what would become known as the Mosaic Law, every year during the Passover feast, lambs by the thousands were sacrificed as pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem would purchase lambs at the temple for ceremonial sacrifice to cover their personal sins. That part the Ethiopian probably understood. What he didn’t comprehend, however, was who this prophecy was talking about. In fact, he may not have even known who Jesus of Nazareth was, so that had to be Philip’s starting point I imagine. Seriously, it’s entirely possible that Philip had to begin at ground level zero which would have meant he had to give an introduction of this prophet from Nazareth named Jesus. In any case, based on the text, in order to tie what was written by the prophet Isaiah to Jesus, Philip would have had to have related to the Ethiopian the events that happened to Jesus on the night when He was arrested and was subjected to three trials. Let’s review what Philip had to have told him.
Jesus’ first trial that night was before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, and it happened just hours after He was arrested. In Matthew chapter 27, Matthew records that in this trial, Jesus remained silent as false witness after false witness was brought before the Council spewing lies about things Jesus had said but, throughout this whole fiasco, even though none of his accusers could get their stories to line up with anyone else’s stories, Jesus said nothing in His defense. He only admitted to being the Messiah after the High Priest put Him under oath which legally compelled Him to do so. For the record, that admission was all it took to push the Sanhedrin over the top and deliver a guilty verdict and set the wheels in motion for His Roman execution by crucifixion.
The next day, as Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, Matthew records that when Pilate questioned Jesus that He did the same thing He’d done the night before. In regard to the charges brought against Him, he said not a word leaving Pilate at loss as to what to do with Him. About the only thing that Pilate could ascertain was that Jesus was from Galilee which was good news as far as Pilate was concerned. If Jesus was from Galilee, that meant that He was not from a place in his jurisdiction but rather from a place in Herod’s jurisdiction which technically made Jesus Herod’s problem and not his, because Herod was the governor of Galilee. Whew, problem solved, at least so Pilate thought. He washed his hands of the matter and shipped Jesus off to Herod.
When Jesus was brought before Herod, He was once again falsely accused. This is just my opinion but this might have been the most difficult of the three trials that Jesus endured because Luke records that Herod, hoping to see some sort of miracle performed, peppered Jesus with all kinds of questions. As He had done with Pilate though, like a lamb being led to slaughter, Jesus said nothing. Disappointed and probably a bit frustrated, Herod sent Jesus back to Pilate.
“Unjustly condemned,” are the next words that the Ethiopian read. Once Philip made the connection that tied Jesus to the lamb in Isaiah 53, this next part was easy. Going back to Luke’s gospel account, in the final trial, if one could call it that because, as trials go, this one was sketchy at best, Jesus was condemned to die. It really was sketchy, a perversion of justice actually. In Luke 23, Luke records that three times Pilate said to the Sanhedrin that Jesus had done nothing to deserve the death penalty and that at one point he came out and told them point blank that they didn’t have a case…period. In the end though, because the mob of people had been stirred up to a frenzy by the Sanhedrin and was ready to riot, he succumbed to their will and sentenced Jesus to be executed for crimes the He did not commit.
“No one cared that he died without descendants that his life was cut short midstream.” Jesus was thirty-three and unmarried when He was crucified and, outside of a handful of followers, no one cared that He was executed. Pilate, when faced with the choice of having a riot break out in his jurisdiction if he didn’t have Jesus crucified, gave the people what they wanted. Pilate’s Roman superiors would have had his head if he had allowed a riot to break out in Jerusalem so, in the end, it was either Jesus or him and, since Pilate was holding all the cards, Pilate won. The Sanhedrin certainly didn’t care. Jesus was a threat to their power base so they were actually happy that He was being crucified. And the masses, they were probably just enraged at Jesus more than anything. They were looking for a Messiah to throw off the Roman chains and lead the nation of Israel back to its former glory and if Jesus wasn’t going to be that kind of a messiah, then what good was he? “Crucify Him!” they screamed, and good riddance. No, by and large, at the end of the day, outside of His disciples, a few women and a small group of secret followers, no one cared that Jesus died.
“But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.” This phrase, this verse, was the kicker. Applied to Jesus, it says that Jesus paid for the rebellion of His people. Now to truly comprehend what this verse meant, as Philip explained this passage to the Ethiopian, he had to have gone back one verse prior to what the Ethiopian was reading, back to Isaiah 53:6 where Isaiah wrote, “All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.” As a former teacher, I recognize what Philip did here. He went from the known to the unknown with his student. The Ethiopian knew about the animal sacrifices and what their significance was. He also knew that these animals had done nothing wrong, that they were innocent but, so that God didn’t have to punish the individual offering the sacrifice for their sin, God punished the animal instead. He might have also known that the blood of lambs could never ultimately pay for the sins of the people because a person had to repeat the process each year. What he didn’t know though, and what Philip explained to him, was that Jesus, was the ultimate “lamb,” the ultimate sacrifice, and that He paid the penalty inflicted by people’s sin. Referring back to Old Testament principles and applying them to Jesus, Philip told the Ethiopian that Jesus’ shed blood was sufficient to pay for the offenses of humanity once and for all and this was good news. Once Jesus died on the cross, no more animal sacrifices would ever be necessary again.
Now, at the conclusion of their conversation, because the Ethiopian asked to be baptized, it’s obvious that this was an, “ah hah,” moment for him. Not only did he believe it intellectually, but he also committed to it practically. He realized that in the same way that innocent animals, when they were sacrificed on the altar, served as a substitute for people because the guilt of the person was transferred to the animal, that this Jesus of Nazareth had been a substitute for him, that his guilt had been transferred to Jesus and that God’s anger against him had been satisfied forever. He realized that Jesus had taken the punishment that he had rightly deserved. In other words, he understood what these words written by Isaiah, “the LORD laid on Him, the sins of us all,” meant and how it applied to him.
So, how does this apply to you and me? Let’s don’t leave our Ethiopian friend just yet. As Philip explained the passage, the light went on in the man’s mind and he connected the dots. Jesus, on the cross, became like a receptacle for his rebellion, both active and passive, and the application for him and for us who live in the 21st Century as well, was clear. God the Father took both his rebellion and ours, all of it, and dumped it on Jesus, God the Son, and then executed judgement on it. Justice was served in full measure. Let’s review for one last time, Isaiah’s description of the event. “But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed…the LORD laid on him the sins of us all…he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.” (Isaiah 53: 5 – 8) Beginning with the scourging and ending with the spear being thrust, full force into His side after He had died, just to make sure He was dead, these words, written 700 years before Jesus was born, are a precise description of what happened to Jesus when He was crucified. And the reason for it all was that God dumped all of our sin onto Jesus and Jesus willingly took it so that we wouldn’t have to. God the Father judged Jesus, God the Son, His Son, instead of us. He loves us that much. Let that thought sink in for a minute. That’s how much God loves you.
Now, the question for us is what are we going to do about it because no information about Jesus is ever given to us merely to inform us, rather it’s given to us with the intention that we will do something with it. It’s usually given to us in order to change us at the core level. The Ethiopian eunuch, when presented with this truth, chose to follow Jesus and he made an all-in commitment that changed his life forever. How about us? What will we do? Will we make that same all-in commitment that the Ethiopian Eunuch made or will we choose to pass, which basically constitutes rejection. God the Father placed the guilt for the rebellion of each one of us entirely on Jesus but if we choose not to accept that sacrifice, then that sin is still on us and we will carry it, complete with the consequences of spending an eternity in hell, separated from God, with us when we die. (And everyone dies eventually…nobody is getting out of here alive.)
Now, if we want to respond to this truth about Jesus, the Ethiopian can give us a blueprint for how to do it. The Ethiopian had gone to Jerusalem to worship God and to present his sacrifices because he knew that he couldn’t save himself. He knew that he had done things that were offensive to God and that they needed to be dealt with and, if we want to respond to this truth, we need to do the same thing that he did. We need to admit that we too have offended God and that like our Ethiopian friend, we can’t save ourselves either. The Ethiopian also acknowledged that Jesus had taken his place on the cross and that Jesus had paid the penalty for his guilt. We need to do the same.
And lastly, the Ethiopian was baptized and here’s where it gets a bit tricky. To fully comprehend what the Ethiopian did when he asked to be baptized, we need to get into head for a minute and see baptism as he saw it. In the first century, baptism was an outward expression to demonstrate that a person was all in. In other words, what the Ethiopian was signifying with this act was that he was now a follower of Jesus and that Jesus had complete control of his life. The Ethiopian had exchanged his agenda for Jesus’ agenda. He wasn’t just giving mental assent he was putting skin in the game. From that point on he was allowing Jesus to dictate the affairs of his life. During his ministry, Jesus was clear about this that we must do the same thing. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.” were Jesus’ exact words in Luke 9:23. Notice He didn’t say, “believe in me,” He said, “follow me.” The Ethiopian made a decision to follow Jesus, will we, will you? I made the decision to follow Jesus about twenty years ago and it’s by far the best decision that I have ever made in my life. If you want to follow Jesus, simply tell Him about it. The easiest way that I know how to do it is through prayer in street English. Jesus is fluent in it by the way. “Jesus, I believe that you took my place on the cross and took the penalty that I rightly deserved when you died on the cross. Thank you because I could never have paid that penalty myself. I didn’t have the ability to do that and I never will. I believe that you did though, so once again, thank you and from this point for the rest of my life, I want to follow you. I’m all in. Make whatever changes you want or need to make in my life. You’re in control now. It’s your agenda not mine that I am going to live out to the best of my ability. In Jesus name, Amen.”
Next a week I want to take a further look at Isaiah 53, especially as it relates to this idea of righteousness and see how Philip and the Ethiopian would have interpreted that because their concept of righteousness, while similar, are a bit different from yours and mine and it’s frankly a game changer. As always, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, I’ll see you next week.
Once again, the main player in the second part of Acts 8 is Philip. As you recall, picking up our story from last week, Philip was in Samaria when Luke records that the Lord instructed him to go back into Judea, south of Jerusalem to the desert road that ran from Jerusalem to Gaza. Philip didn’t know why he was supposed to go there, only that he was supposed to and so, that’s what he did.
When his feet hit the cobble heading to Gaza, he came upon this man sitting in his carriage who happened to be the treasurer of the Kingdom of Ethiopia, a eunuch with great authority. The man was reading aloud from the Old Testament book of Isaiah.
As he neared the carriage, Philip asked. “Do you understand what you are reading?”
I suspect that the eunuch set the scroll down, and just threw up his hands as he turned to Philip. “How can I unless someone instructs me?”
Luke doesn’t tell us what exactly Philip said but, in the conversation that followed, the treasurer invited Philip to come into the carriage and explain to him who that Old Testament passage was talking about and how that applied to him. For the next hour or so probably, Philip used the passage that the man had been reading to give him a concise explanation of the message of Jesus. In the end, the eunuch believed and was baptized as an expression of his newfound faith.
One of the things that drove my study of Acts this past winter was I would often look past just the obvious and try to fill in the gaps between the main points. As I would read various passages, I would try and speculate as to what the finer details might be in them and this passage definitely lent itself to do that because Luke gave us the starting point. According to Luke, the two verses from Isaiah that the eunuch was reading when Philip came upon him was Isaiah 53: 7 and 8, a passage that had been written 700 years prior but was, none-the-less, all about Jesus. Let’s dive into it.
“He was oppressed and treated harshly yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb led to slaughter. As a sheep is silent before its shearers, he did not open his mouth.” This lamb analogy was an analogy that both Isaiah’s readers would have been quite familiar with and the Ethiopian would have been familiar with as well. Dating back to the time when Moses was given what would become known as the Mosaic Law, every year during the Passover feast, lambs by the thousands were sacrificed as pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem would purchase lambs at the temple for ceremonial sacrifice to cover their personal sins. That part the Ethiopian probably understood. What he didn’t comprehend, however, was who this prophecy was talking about. In fact, he may not have even known who Jesus of Nazareth was, so that had to be Philip’s starting point I imagine. Seriously, it’s entirely possible that Philip had to begin at ground level zero which would have meant he had to give an introduction of this prophet from Nazareth named Jesus. In any case, based on the text, in order to tie what was written by the prophet Isaiah to Jesus, Philip would have had to have related to the Ethiopian the events that happened to Jesus on the night when He was arrested and was subjected to three trials. Let’s review what Philip had to have told him.
Jesus’ first trial that night was before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, and it happened just hours after He was arrested. In Matthew chapter 27, Matthew records that in this trial, Jesus remained silent as false witness after false witness was brought before the Council spewing lies about things Jesus had said but, throughout this whole fiasco, even though none of his accusers could get their stories to line up with anyone else’s stories, Jesus said nothing in His defense. He only admitted to being the Messiah after the High Priest put Him under oath which legally compelled Him to do so. For the record, that admission was all it took to push the Sanhedrin over the top and deliver a guilty verdict and set the wheels in motion for His Roman execution by crucifixion.
The next day, as Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea, Matthew records that when Pilate questioned Jesus that He did the same thing He’d done the night before. In regard to the charges brought against Him, he said not a word leaving Pilate at loss as to what to do with Him. About the only thing that Pilate could ascertain was that Jesus was from Galilee which was good news as far as Pilate was concerned. If Jesus was from Galilee, that meant that He was not from a place in his jurisdiction but rather from a place in Herod’s jurisdiction which technically made Jesus Herod’s problem and not his, because Herod was the governor of Galilee. Whew, problem solved, at least so Pilate thought. He washed his hands of the matter and shipped Jesus off to Herod.
When Jesus was brought before Herod, He was once again falsely accused. This is just my opinion but this might have been the most difficult of the three trials that Jesus endured because Luke records that Herod, hoping to see some sort of miracle performed, peppered Jesus with all kinds of questions. As He had done with Pilate though, like a lamb being led to slaughter, Jesus said nothing. Disappointed and probably a bit frustrated, Herod sent Jesus back to Pilate.
“Unjustly condemned,” are the next words that the Ethiopian read. Once Philip made the connection that tied Jesus to the lamb in Isaiah 53, this next part was easy. Going back to Luke’s gospel account, in the final trial, if one could call it that because, as trials go, this one was sketchy at best, Jesus was condemned to die. It really was sketchy, a perversion of justice actually. In Luke 23, Luke records that three times Pilate said to the Sanhedrin that Jesus had done nothing to deserve the death penalty and that at one point he came out and told them point blank that they didn’t have a case…period. In the end though, because the mob of people had been stirred up to a frenzy by the Sanhedrin and was ready to riot, he succumbed to their will and sentenced Jesus to be executed for crimes the He did not commit.
“No one cared that he died without descendants that his life was cut short midstream.” Jesus was thirty-three and unmarried when He was crucified and, outside of a handful of followers, no one cared that He was executed. Pilate, when faced with the choice of having a riot break out in his jurisdiction if he didn’t have Jesus crucified, gave the people what they wanted. Pilate’s Roman superiors would have had his head if he had allowed a riot to break out in Jerusalem so, in the end, it was either Jesus or him and, since Pilate was holding all the cards, Pilate won. The Sanhedrin certainly didn’t care. Jesus was a threat to their power base so they were actually happy that He was being crucified. And the masses, they were probably just enraged at Jesus more than anything. They were looking for a Messiah to throw off the Roman chains and lead the nation of Israel back to its former glory and if Jesus wasn’t going to be that kind of a messiah, then what good was he? “Crucify Him!” they screamed, and good riddance. No, by and large, at the end of the day, outside of His disciples, a few women and a small group of secret followers, no one cared that Jesus died.
“But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.” This phrase, this verse, was the kicker. Applied to Jesus, it says that Jesus paid for the rebellion of His people. Now to truly comprehend what this verse meant, as Philip explained this passage to the Ethiopian, he had to have gone back one verse prior to what the Ethiopian was reading, back to Isaiah 53:6 where Isaiah wrote, “All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.” As a former teacher, I recognize what Philip did here. He went from the known to the unknown with his student. The Ethiopian knew about the animal sacrifices and what their significance was. He also knew that these animals had done nothing wrong, that they were innocent but, so that God didn’t have to punish the individual offering the sacrifice for their sin, God punished the animal instead. He might have also known that the blood of lambs could never ultimately pay for the sins of the people because a person had to repeat the process each year. What he didn’t know though, and what Philip explained to him, was that Jesus, was the ultimate “lamb,” the ultimate sacrifice, and that He paid the penalty inflicted by people’s sin. Referring back to Old Testament principles and applying them to Jesus, Philip told the Ethiopian that Jesus’ shed blood was sufficient to pay for the offenses of humanity once and for all and this was good news. Once Jesus died on the cross, no more animal sacrifices would ever be necessary again.
Now, at the conclusion of their conversation, because the Ethiopian asked to be baptized, it’s obvious that this was an, “ah hah,” moment for him. Not only did he believe it intellectually, but he also committed to it practically. He realized that in the same way that innocent animals, when they were sacrificed on the altar, served as a substitute for people because the guilt of the person was transferred to the animal, that this Jesus of Nazareth had been a substitute for him, that his guilt had been transferred to Jesus and that God’s anger against him had been satisfied forever. He realized that Jesus had taken the punishment that he had rightly deserved. In other words, he understood what these words written by Isaiah, “the LORD laid on Him, the sins of us all,” meant and how it applied to him.
So, how does this apply to you and me? Let’s don’t leave our Ethiopian friend just yet. As Philip explained the passage, the light went on in the man’s mind and he connected the dots. Jesus, on the cross, became like a receptacle for his rebellion, both active and passive, and the application for him and for us who live in the 21st Century as well, was clear. God the Father took both his rebellion and ours, all of it, and dumped it on Jesus, God the Son, and then executed judgement on it. Justice was served in full measure. Let’s review for one last time, Isaiah’s description of the event. “But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed…the LORD laid on him the sins of us all…he was struck down for the rebellion of my people.” (Isaiah 53: 5 – 8) Beginning with the scourging and ending with the spear being thrust, full force into His side after He had died, just to make sure He was dead, these words, written 700 years before Jesus was born, are a precise description of what happened to Jesus when He was crucified. And the reason for it all was that God dumped all of our sin onto Jesus and Jesus willingly took it so that we wouldn’t have to. God the Father judged Jesus, God the Son, His Son, instead of us. He loves us that much. Let that thought sink in for a minute. That’s how much God loves you.
Now, the question for us is what are we going to do about it because no information about Jesus is ever given to us merely to inform us, rather it’s given to us with the intention that we will do something with it. It’s usually given to us in order to change us at the core level. The Ethiopian eunuch, when presented with this truth, chose to follow Jesus and he made an all-in commitment that changed his life forever. How about us? What will we do? Will we make that same all-in commitment that the Ethiopian Eunuch made or will we choose to pass, which basically constitutes rejection. God the Father placed the guilt for the rebellion of each one of us entirely on Jesus but if we choose not to accept that sacrifice, then that sin is still on us and we will carry it, complete with the consequences of spending an eternity in hell, separated from God, with us when we die. (And everyone dies eventually…nobody is getting out of here alive.)
Now, if we want to respond to this truth about Jesus, the Ethiopian can give us a blueprint for how to do it. The Ethiopian had gone to Jerusalem to worship God and to present his sacrifices because he knew that he couldn’t save himself. He knew that he had done things that were offensive to God and that they needed to be dealt with and, if we want to respond to this truth, we need to do the same thing that he did. We need to admit that we too have offended God and that like our Ethiopian friend, we can’t save ourselves either. The Ethiopian also acknowledged that Jesus had taken his place on the cross and that Jesus had paid the penalty for his guilt. We need to do the same.
And lastly, the Ethiopian was baptized and here’s where it gets a bit tricky. To fully comprehend what the Ethiopian did when he asked to be baptized, we need to get into head for a minute and see baptism as he saw it. In the first century, baptism was an outward expression to demonstrate that a person was all in. In other words, what the Ethiopian was signifying with this act was that he was now a follower of Jesus and that Jesus had complete control of his life. The Ethiopian had exchanged his agenda for Jesus’ agenda. He wasn’t just giving mental assent he was putting skin in the game. From that point on he was allowing Jesus to dictate the affairs of his life. During his ministry, Jesus was clear about this that we must do the same thing. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.” were Jesus’ exact words in Luke 9:23. Notice He didn’t say, “believe in me,” He said, “follow me.” The Ethiopian made a decision to follow Jesus, will we, will you? I made the decision to follow Jesus about twenty years ago and it’s by far the best decision that I have ever made in my life. If you want to follow Jesus, simply tell Him about it. The easiest way that I know how to do it is through prayer in street English. Jesus is fluent in it by the way. “Jesus, I believe that you took my place on the cross and took the penalty that I rightly deserved when you died on the cross. Thank you because I could never have paid that penalty myself. I didn’t have the ability to do that and I never will. I believe that you did though, so once again, thank you and from this point for the rest of my life, I want to follow you. I’m all in. Make whatever changes you want or need to make in my life. You’re in control now. It’s your agenda not mine that I am going to live out to the best of my ability. In Jesus name, Amen.”
Next a week I want to take a further look at Isaiah 53, especially as it relates to this idea of righteousness and see how Philip and the Ethiopian would have interpreted that because their concept of righteousness, while similar, are a bit different from yours and mine and it’s frankly a game changer. As always, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, I’ll see you next week.
Acts 8: What Else Did Philip Say?
Any writers out there? Have you ever tried to write something and, four drafts later come to the conclusion that when it comes to what you’re writing, or correction, trying to write, that this just isn’t working? Story of my life for the last two weeks. As I mentioned before in my previous post, what I wanted to do was take a deeper dive into Isaiah 53 and expose more depth into what Isaiah was saying in that chapter. The problem was, there was no way that I was going to do Isaiah 53 any kind of justice in under 3000 words. It just wasn’t gonna happen. So, I ended up 86’ing last week’s draft and starting over. Sometimes it just happens that way.
Now, going back to the beginning, like I mentioned three weeks ago, we know that Philip’s launching point when he talked to the Ethiopian eunuch was Isaiah 53:7 and, according to Luke’s account of what happened in Acts 8, after the Ethiopian invited Philip to climb into the carriage with him, “beginning with that passage that Philip opened his mouth and told him the good news about Jesus.” But what else besides Isaiah 53:7 did Philip talk about with him? We have no idea. However, based on the fact that the Ethiopian was baptized, we can draw a few conclusions. Philip told him that Jesus was the person who Isaiah was talking about. He told him that Jesus was sinless, was God in the flesh, that He had been crucified and that He had risen from the dead on the third day, that He had ascended into heaven and that He was coming back again to set up His kingdom. Those are the basics and there’s no way that Philip would have left them out. But what else might he have told him? I honestly don’t know but, especially if Philip remained in Isaiah 53, it’s not a reach to suggest that he also told the Ethiopian about the last two verses, which give a different take on what happened from God’s perspective when Jesus was crucified. For this week’s post, let’s take a look at them.
After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53: 11 – 12)
What stood out to me as I have studied this passage these past three or four weeks is that when put into the context of which Isaiah wrote it, is just how ripe with legal language these two verses are. The words that he used were words that would have been used in a court of law. Isaiah used the terms righteous, and justify, and transgressors. The Hebrew word for transgressor was taken from the word “pesha” which would be defined as someone who engaged in rebellious acts, rebellion, or especially, a breach of trust. Then there was the term justify. It’s meaning is, “to do or to bring justice in administering the law.” And lastly, there’s this term righteous. In 21st Century English, we see that term as a moral term but, although Isaiah would have seen it as a concept with moral undertones, that wouldn’t have been its primary context. In Isaiah’s day, he would have interpreted it primarily in a legal context. The Hebrew word that was used here is “tsaddiq”, and it means innocent, just, or righteous and was often used in legal proceedings and legal disputes.
Now, keeping all three of these words in mind, coupled with the fact that Isaiah 53 is a prophecy about Jesus, what exactly was Isaiah saying happened when Jesus was crucified? Without overthinking things, what it would appear Isaiah was saying was this. Jesus was innocent in the legal sense of the word and the human race was guilty because they had violated God’s laws. Now, because God’s laws had been violated, justice had to be served. Someone had to pay for the offense and the logical choice for who should pay for the offense would be the person, or persons who committed the crime. That’s not what Isaiah said happened though. He said that Jesus, even though He was innocent, was numbered or associated with the guilty and paid the penalty for the crimes and through this act, many of the guilty would be counted as innocent. That was their legal status in God’s estimation.
Now for those of you who have never thought of the crucifixion of Jesus in this way, lets expand on it a bit and see if we can get a clearer picture of what is going on here. God’s laws were broken, repeatedly by all of us, and just as it is in all societies when laws are broken, there are consequences generated by that action ranging anywhere from fines to community service, to incarceration, to death even and it’s the same way with God’s judicial system only in His case, the consequences for violating His laws are far more severe than the consequences for violating human laws because of God’s holy character.
Yes, those consequences are more severe. Listen to how Paul unpacked things. In Romans 6:23, he wrote, “For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Notice the word, wages. The Greek word that Paul used when he wrote this verse has the same meaning as its English translation. It’s an economic word. You do the work and you draw the paycheck. Your paycheck is your wages. It’s what you have earned. It’s what you rightly deserve. So, what Paul is saying here is that if a person commits a sin, they get death. That’s the wages. That’s what a person who sins has earned. Death is what they rightly deserve. (Sin, as defined in the Bible, is any act, thought, or motive that is less than God’s standard of perfection.)
Now, when it comes to death, that’s a concept that everyone is familiar with because all of us have people who have physically died but, when it comes to Romans, we need to sit up and pay attention because the death to which Paul was referring to was not physical death only. No, it’s far more serious than that. The death that Paul was referring to was both a physical death, but even more importantly, it’s a spiritual death as well. The death that Paul was talking about is an eternal separation from God in a place that the Bible calls hell. What’s hell like? In Revelation, John called it “The Lake of Fire.” Jesus described it as Gehenna, the name of the garbage dump just outside of Jerusalem during His day where the refuse from the city was taken and burned. The fires at Gehenna burned 24/7. In His teachings Jesus also used terms like destruction and never-ending torment and, going back to his garbage dump reference, He said it was a place where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched. This was how He described the environment there and He repeatedly warned His audiences not to choose to go there. It was also what drove Him to die on the cross. That’s how awful Jesus thought it was and how serious He took it.
Now, if you’re thinking that this is depressing, I don’t blame you. It is. Fortunately for us, that’s not all there is to the story. There’s the second part of Romans 6:23 where Paul mentions a gift of God which is eternal life, the opposite of death, through Jesus Christ. So, what’s that about? The gift of God to which Paul referred to is a free gift of grace, of undeserved favor that is available to the entire human race through Jesus Christ, that is a gift of eternal life, the exact opposite of death. Undeserved favor? Yes, God has put an offer on the table that could only be described as underserved favor. How can He do that and still be God, still be true to Himself? Going back to Isaiah 53, Jesus, the innocent one, paid the penalty for us, the guilty ones. Yes, a crime(s) against God has been committed but payment for that crime has been made. As far as God the Father is concerned, He’s been paid and He’s satisfied with the payment.
So, does that mean that now everyone receives this free gift automatically? Is that what Isaiah and Paul were saying? No, they weren’t saying that at all. You see, the thing that caused the separation between us and God and made it necessary for Jesus to die on the cross in the first place was our rebellion, our willful choice to rebel and throw off God’s rule in our life. So, in order to receive that gift and be forgiven, we have to choose to end that rebellion and come back under God’s authority in our life. You see, coming back to the topic of hell, there is one thing about the place that no one really talks about all that much and that’s that it’s the only place in all of creation that God will never be, ever. In heaven now, and on earth later when God restores things when Jesus returns to earth a second time, God’s good rule and authority will be the only agenda in operation for all time and if a person did not want to live under that rule and authority but were forced to anyway, they would be absolutely miserable. So, there is a 2nd option, a Plan B, if you will, and that’s to spend eternity in the place the Bible calls hell. A place that, for the record, wasn’t even created for us. We weren’t the target when God created it. The devil and his angels were. But it is the place where a person doesn’t have to live under God’s authority. Is hell an absolutely horrible place? According to Jesus, yes, it is. Horrible enough that Jesus Christ, God the Son, left heaven, chose to become a man, and die the most excruciating death imaginable to give people a way to avoid going there. But it is a place where if a person chooses to go to, they can rest assured that God won’t be there. And God, even as we speak, is relentlessly pursuing people and wooing them to return back to Himself so that they won’t have to spend eternity there. He won’t force us to accept His offer though, that choice is ours. God has given us that. And with that choice comes responsibility. We had best choose wisely.
Now let’s go back to Acts 8 and revisit Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in closing. He chose to take God up on His offer and accept Jesus as Lord. He chose to admit to God that he had violated God’s laws and that he couldn’t save himself. He chose to accept Jesus as his savior and he chose to be baptized, an act that in his time signified an all-in commitment on his part to submit to Jesus’ authority in his life. Does that mean that he lived a perfect life after he was baptized? No. But what did happen is that from that point on he allowed God to begin the process of changing him from the inside out to make him become more and more like Jesus beginning with his motives, continuing with his thoughts, and ending with his actions. It’s a process by the way that wouldn’t be completed until he experienced physical death just as it will be with us.
So, how about you? How will you choose? Will you choose to admit your rebellion to God and ask for forgiveness? Will you choose to apply Jesus’ death on the cross to your own life? Will you choose to end your rebellion and live the rest of your life willingly under God’s authority? If so, why not tell God about it? Why not pray a prayer something like this. “God, I’ve willingly rebelled against you and I deserve eternal death, separation from you for that. But I want to change all that. I believe that You sent Your Son Jesus to die for me and pay the penalty that He didn’t deserve, but I did, for that rebellion. I believe that You raised Jesus from the dead and I accept Him as my Savior. I am willingly going to live under Your authority and follow You as best I can for the rest of my life. I’m all in God. Thank you for forgiving me. Please change me and make me like Jesus. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Next a week I want to look at how God invaded the space of one of his enemies and changed the man’s life forever. See you then and as always, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you.
Next a week I want to take a further look at Isaiah 53, especially as it relates to this idea of righteousness and see how Philip and the Ethiopian would have interpreted that because their concept of righteousness, while similar, are a bit different from yours and mine and it’s frankly a game changer. As always, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, I’ll see you next week.
Now, going back to the beginning, like I mentioned three weeks ago, we know that Philip’s launching point when he talked to the Ethiopian eunuch was Isaiah 53:7 and, according to Luke’s account of what happened in Acts 8, after the Ethiopian invited Philip to climb into the carriage with him, “beginning with that passage that Philip opened his mouth and told him the good news about Jesus.” But what else besides Isaiah 53:7 did Philip talk about with him? We have no idea. However, based on the fact that the Ethiopian was baptized, we can draw a few conclusions. Philip told him that Jesus was the person who Isaiah was talking about. He told him that Jesus was sinless, was God in the flesh, that He had been crucified and that He had risen from the dead on the third day, that He had ascended into heaven and that He was coming back again to set up His kingdom. Those are the basics and there’s no way that Philip would have left them out. But what else might he have told him? I honestly don’t know but, especially if Philip remained in Isaiah 53, it’s not a reach to suggest that he also told the Ethiopian about the last two verses, which give a different take on what happened from God’s perspective when Jesus was crucified. For this week’s post, let’s take a look at them.
After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53: 11 – 12)
What stood out to me as I have studied this passage these past three or four weeks is that when put into the context of which Isaiah wrote it, is just how ripe with legal language these two verses are. The words that he used were words that would have been used in a court of law. Isaiah used the terms righteous, and justify, and transgressors. The Hebrew word for transgressor was taken from the word “pesha” which would be defined as someone who engaged in rebellious acts, rebellion, or especially, a breach of trust. Then there was the term justify. It’s meaning is, “to do or to bring justice in administering the law.” And lastly, there’s this term righteous. In 21st Century English, we see that term as a moral term but, although Isaiah would have seen it as a concept with moral undertones, that wouldn’t have been its primary context. In Isaiah’s day, he would have interpreted it primarily in a legal context. The Hebrew word that was used here is “tsaddiq”, and it means innocent, just, or righteous and was often used in legal proceedings and legal disputes.
Now, keeping all three of these words in mind, coupled with the fact that Isaiah 53 is a prophecy about Jesus, what exactly was Isaiah saying happened when Jesus was crucified? Without overthinking things, what it would appear Isaiah was saying was this. Jesus was innocent in the legal sense of the word and the human race was guilty because they had violated God’s laws. Now, because God’s laws had been violated, justice had to be served. Someone had to pay for the offense and the logical choice for who should pay for the offense would be the person, or persons who committed the crime. That’s not what Isaiah said happened though. He said that Jesus, even though He was innocent, was numbered or associated with the guilty and paid the penalty for the crimes and through this act, many of the guilty would be counted as innocent. That was their legal status in God’s estimation.
Now for those of you who have never thought of the crucifixion of Jesus in this way, lets expand on it a bit and see if we can get a clearer picture of what is going on here. God’s laws were broken, repeatedly by all of us, and just as it is in all societies when laws are broken, there are consequences generated by that action ranging anywhere from fines to community service, to incarceration, to death even and it’s the same way with God’s judicial system only in His case, the consequences for violating His laws are far more severe than the consequences for violating human laws because of God’s holy character.
Yes, those consequences are more severe. Listen to how Paul unpacked things. In Romans 6:23, he wrote, “For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Notice the word, wages. The Greek word that Paul used when he wrote this verse has the same meaning as its English translation. It’s an economic word. You do the work and you draw the paycheck. Your paycheck is your wages. It’s what you have earned. It’s what you rightly deserve. So, what Paul is saying here is that if a person commits a sin, they get death. That’s the wages. That’s what a person who sins has earned. Death is what they rightly deserve. (Sin, as defined in the Bible, is any act, thought, or motive that is less than God’s standard of perfection.)
Now, when it comes to death, that’s a concept that everyone is familiar with because all of us have people who have physically died but, when it comes to Romans, we need to sit up and pay attention because the death to which Paul was referring to was not physical death only. No, it’s far more serious than that. The death that Paul was referring to was both a physical death, but even more importantly, it’s a spiritual death as well. The death that Paul was talking about is an eternal separation from God in a place that the Bible calls hell. What’s hell like? In Revelation, John called it “The Lake of Fire.” Jesus described it as Gehenna, the name of the garbage dump just outside of Jerusalem during His day where the refuse from the city was taken and burned. The fires at Gehenna burned 24/7. In His teachings Jesus also used terms like destruction and never-ending torment and, going back to his garbage dump reference, He said it was a place where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched. This was how He described the environment there and He repeatedly warned His audiences not to choose to go there. It was also what drove Him to die on the cross. That’s how awful Jesus thought it was and how serious He took it.
Now, if you’re thinking that this is depressing, I don’t blame you. It is. Fortunately for us, that’s not all there is to the story. There’s the second part of Romans 6:23 where Paul mentions a gift of God which is eternal life, the opposite of death, through Jesus Christ. So, what’s that about? The gift of God to which Paul referred to is a free gift of grace, of undeserved favor that is available to the entire human race through Jesus Christ, that is a gift of eternal life, the exact opposite of death. Undeserved favor? Yes, God has put an offer on the table that could only be described as underserved favor. How can He do that and still be God, still be true to Himself? Going back to Isaiah 53, Jesus, the innocent one, paid the penalty for us, the guilty ones. Yes, a crime(s) against God has been committed but payment for that crime has been made. As far as God the Father is concerned, He’s been paid and He’s satisfied with the payment.
So, does that mean that now everyone receives this free gift automatically? Is that what Isaiah and Paul were saying? No, they weren’t saying that at all. You see, the thing that caused the separation between us and God and made it necessary for Jesus to die on the cross in the first place was our rebellion, our willful choice to rebel and throw off God’s rule in our life. So, in order to receive that gift and be forgiven, we have to choose to end that rebellion and come back under God’s authority in our life. You see, coming back to the topic of hell, there is one thing about the place that no one really talks about all that much and that’s that it’s the only place in all of creation that God will never be, ever. In heaven now, and on earth later when God restores things when Jesus returns to earth a second time, God’s good rule and authority will be the only agenda in operation for all time and if a person did not want to live under that rule and authority but were forced to anyway, they would be absolutely miserable. So, there is a 2nd option, a Plan B, if you will, and that’s to spend eternity in the place the Bible calls hell. A place that, for the record, wasn’t even created for us. We weren’t the target when God created it. The devil and his angels were. But it is the place where a person doesn’t have to live under God’s authority. Is hell an absolutely horrible place? According to Jesus, yes, it is. Horrible enough that Jesus Christ, God the Son, left heaven, chose to become a man, and die the most excruciating death imaginable to give people a way to avoid going there. But it is a place where if a person chooses to go to, they can rest assured that God won’t be there. And God, even as we speak, is relentlessly pursuing people and wooing them to return back to Himself so that they won’t have to spend eternity there. He won’t force us to accept His offer though, that choice is ours. God has given us that. And with that choice comes responsibility. We had best choose wisely.
Now let’s go back to Acts 8 and revisit Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in closing. He chose to take God up on His offer and accept Jesus as Lord. He chose to admit to God that he had violated God’s laws and that he couldn’t save himself. He chose to accept Jesus as his savior and he chose to be baptized, an act that in his time signified an all-in commitment on his part to submit to Jesus’ authority in his life. Does that mean that he lived a perfect life after he was baptized? No. But what did happen is that from that point on he allowed God to begin the process of changing him from the inside out to make him become more and more like Jesus beginning with his motives, continuing with his thoughts, and ending with his actions. It’s a process by the way that wouldn’t be completed until he experienced physical death just as it will be with us.
So, how about you? How will you choose? Will you choose to admit your rebellion to God and ask for forgiveness? Will you choose to apply Jesus’ death on the cross to your own life? Will you choose to end your rebellion and live the rest of your life willingly under God’s authority? If so, why not tell God about it? Why not pray a prayer something like this. “God, I’ve willingly rebelled against you and I deserve eternal death, separation from you for that. But I want to change all that. I believe that You sent Your Son Jesus to die for me and pay the penalty that He didn’t deserve, but I did, for that rebellion. I believe that You raised Jesus from the dead and I accept Him as my Savior. I am willingly going to live under Your authority and follow You as best I can for the rest of my life. I’m all in God. Thank you for forgiving me. Please change me and make me like Jesus. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Next a week I want to look at how God invaded the space of one of his enemies and changed the man’s life forever. See you then and as always, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you.
Next a week I want to take a further look at Isaiah 53, especially as it relates to this idea of righteousness and see how Philip and the Ethiopian would have interpreted that because their concept of righteousness, while similar, are a bit different from yours and mine and it’s frankly a game changer. As always, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. In the meantime, I’ll see you next week.
Part 17: Acts 9: An Unlikely Choice (Part 1)
Something that shows up repeatedly in the Bible is that when God gets ready to do something big that He often chooses unlikely people to make it happen. For example, in Judges 6 and 7, He used a young man named Gideon, the youngest member of a household from the weakest clan in his tribe to deliver the nation of Israel from the Midianites, an enemy that had oppressed them for seven years. The Midianite army numbered over 23,000 but God, making sure that He and He alone would get the credit for delivering Israel from the hands of their enemies, had Gideon whittle down his army to 300 men and then arm them with clay pots, trumpets, and torches. The battle plan was simple. Make a lot of noise in the middle of the night and let the Midianites kill themselves. Here’s how it went down. Late at night while the Midianites were sleeping, Gideon and his army smashed the clay pots, blew the trumpets, and shouted at the top of their lungs. It probably sounded like a cross between an elementary music concert, five stacks of dishes at a classy restaurant being dropped simultaneously and a class full of three-year-olds throwing a temper tantrum all at the same time. Basically, Gideon’s army made a lot of unruly noise and caused a lot of confusion. It was a total smoke and mirrors act but it worked like a charm. When the racket started, the Midianites turned on each other and killed themselves. And, after the initial attack, they fled in terror. In the end, the entire Midianite army was hunted down and killed.
Effective? Yes, however, lest we think that God was limited to just using society’s riffraff to pull off His purposes, consider this next example. The first commandment in the Ten Commandments that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai was that God’s people were to have no other Gods but Him. God wanted an exclusive covenant relationship with His people, still does incidentally but that’s a topic for another post, but the nation of Israel had a tough time obeying that first one. Actually, all of the other nine Commandments too but who’s counting? God was apparently. Anyway, getting back to that First Commandment, throughout their history Israel constantly vacillated between worshiping Yahweh and worshiping whatever local false god was out there. Typically, it was a plurality thing going on. The people would worship Yahweh and Baal, or Molech, or whoever the local neighborhood deity happened to be in order to cover their bases and with God, that created a problem. Yahweh wasn’t sharing turf with anyone or anything, certainly not with some fabricated angry god named Molech who demanded the sacrifice of live children. Anyway, after 600 years or so of putting up with this rebellion, God had had enough. To fix the problem, He used this ultra-authoritarian, egomaniacal monarch named Nebuchadnezzar who hailed straight outta Babylon to conquer the southern kingdom of Judah and ultimately get rid of the idolatry problem that had plagued the nation for generations. For the record, this was not a high point in Israel’s history but God’s patience had reached its end. The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar pretty much leveled the place but, it was necessary because God had to get His chosen people to quit worshiping false gods so, He arranged to have them conquered and scattered throughout Babylon, the most idolatrous nation in existence at the time, where they would get a megadose of idol worship 24/7. They could worship idols to their hearts’ content.
Once again, God’s genius was on display. His plan worked. The Jewish people got sick of worshiping idols and when a small remnant of Israel’s population returned to the land some 70 years later, they had rejected idol worship and for the rest of their history until the Romans deported them in 70 A.D., idol worship was not one of Israel’s problems, they never went back to it. Were Gideon and Nebuchadnezzar unlikely characters for God to use to accomplish His purposes? Absolutely. But they weren’t the only unlikely characters God used in the Bible to accomplish His purposes. There were many other examples. Check out Acts 9 for instance.
Acts 9 begins with Saul still “breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord,” who were scattered throughout the region. Now, it seems that Saul had done a fairly effective job of tracking the saints in Jerusalem and Judea down but he wasn’t satisfied. Wanting to expand his efforts, he went to the high priest asking for letters authorizing him to go to the synagogues in nearby Damascus and, if he found any followers of “The Way,” to bring them back, bound, to Jerusalem. What was the high priest supposed to say to this request? No? Of course not. Permission granted. Write the letters, sign the letters, and send the boy on his way. Go get ‘em Saul. Round up them blasphemers and tie ‘em up and bring ‘em back.
Although Luke didn’t tell us what was going through Saul’s head, logic dictates that Saul was expecting success. After all, he was really good at what he did and he was highly motivated so success was a foregone conclusion. Foregone conclusion, huh? Yeah, about that. Saul and his entourage were just outside of Damascus when suddenly, a bright light shone about him, knocking him to the ground. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” a voice called out.
“Who are you, Lord?”
“I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”
Now the rest of the party saw the light obviously and heard the voice but they didn’t understand what was being said. Apparently, this was a closed-door meeting minus the doors between Jesus and Saul. When things went back to normal Saul got back to his feet but he was left blind by the bright light so he had to be led by the hand into the city. Once he was there, he didn’t eat or drink anything for three days. He just prayed. This was a paradigm shifting moment in Saul’s life as he reevaluated everything that he had previously thought to be true. Although Luke doesn’t say it in his account, I wonder if the words of Gamaliel, Saul’s former teacher, “you will find yourself fighting against God,” weren’t ringing in his ears. I imagine that he experienced a myriad of emotions because the truth of the matter was that what he had been doing was fighting against God.
Meanwhile, in Damascus there was a Jesus follower named Ananias who suddenly was pulled into the story. Jesus appeared to him in a vision. “Ananias.” Jesus called out to him.
“Here I am, Lord.” Ananias replied.
Jesus had a job for him. Ananias was instructed to go to a Straight Street and find a house owned by some guy named Judas and look for a man from Tarsus named Saul who had been praying and had seen in a vision that a man named Ananias would come in and lay hands on him so that he would regain his sight.
Ananias probably gulped a bit and gave God some pushback. “Lord, I have heard of this man, how much damage he did to the Jesus followers in Jerusalem and how he has letters granting him authority to bind and drag any Jesus followers back to Jerusalem.” Ananias gave a pious and respectful answer, by the way. Inside however, he was probably thinking, “You want me to do what!?”
God persisted. “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”
Ananias obeyed. Saul’s sight was restored and He was baptized and the rest was history.
So, what are some practical things that we can pull from this narrative? First, Ananias had guts. Seriously, it took a lot of courage on Ananias’ part to obey God here. Yeah, we know how the story turned out because we can look at the whole thing with 20/20 hindsight. Ananias didn’t have that advantage. He was looking at things in real time and from his vantage point, this looked like a suicide mission but God was insisting that it was going to be okay. Ananias, therefore, had to act in faith and obey.
Now, lest we just give Ananias his rightfully earned kudos and go on our merry way, there’s something else we’d better consider. When it comes to giving out risky mission kinds of assignments, God still does that and when we’re the recipients of His assignment, we must channel our inner Ananias and make a decision. Yep, we have to make a choice. Will we obey Him or not? Will we play it safe and essentially disobey what God is telling us to do or will we step out in faith and obey?
I suppose that an editorial note is probably in order here. At least in the United States, we generally don’t tend to hear an audible voice from God telling us to do something although God certainly can and has with some people. No. Generally, when God tells us to do something we’ll get this annoying thought that just won’t go away, and, although the thought process won’t include the words, “this is God speaking,” we’ll still know darn well who is talking to us. It’s generally that obvious. Now, sometimes, we’ll try and throw up a defense mechanism by giving this churchy response to God and tell Him that we’ll pray about it thinking that if we pray about it long enough that God will get tired of waiting on us and just go away and choose someone else. I don’t know. Maybe that approach works for some people but it never has for me. Bottom line, God’s talking to me and the right thing to do is obvious. When I silence the outside noise and distractions, what it comes down to is that I have a choice between two agendas, mine or God’s and I get to cast the deciding vote. You read me correctly, I do get to cast the deciding vote on what I will do. I don’t, however, get to cast the deciding vote on the consequences of my actions. Those land squarely in God’s lap but here’s what I have learned over the years. There’s this operating principle that governs the affairs of the universe that we’ve all heard of. We reap what we sow, and how it plays out in this situation is that God is responsible for the consequences of my actions when I obey but I am responsible for the consequences of my actions when I disobey. In my experience, if I obey, things work out in the end. However, regarding the consequences if I disobey. Well, let’s just say that I get trucked and leave it at that. It doesn’t usually end well.
The second thing that stands out is that word, “chose,” and the fact that God was the one who said it. “Saul is an instrument that I have chosen,” were God’s exact words when He spoke to Ananias. To my audience who claim to be following Jesus, are you paying attention here? God chose this unlikely vessel and, how this applies to you and me today is this. God is still choosing unlikely vessels to accomplish His purposes as we speak. Off the top of my head, right now I can think of at least ten people who I am following on social media who, ten years ago were unlikely candidates in anyone’s eyes to even be following Jesus much less have a significant ministry and yet today, all of these people have legitimate, significant ministries. God saw in Saul something that no one else saw. And, coming back to 2023, God sees things in everyone in the world that no one else sees. His eyesight and insight are better than 20/20 because face it, He’s God and He doesn’t make mistakes. So, understand this. Every person we meet is a possible candidate for God to choose to use for His purposes. We can’t blow anyone off as impossible because, with God, all things are possible.
Now my last point piggybacks off of the previous paragraph and everyone needs to sit up and take notice. That Saul was an unlikely person to be chosen to play an important role in the early church is quite clear but there’s one other thing that’s even clearer than that. In fact, it’s so obvious that we sometimes miss it because it’s so simple. Saul’s past did not disqualify him from being used by God. As violent as it was, it didn’t disqualify him from being someone who God could use. If it would have been, God, in His infinite wisdom, never would have chosen Saul but He did. And, if He chose Saul for a mission, that means that, regardless of what’s in your backstory, He could choose you as well. Oscar Wilde put it like this. “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future,” and that was certainly true in Saul’s case. Before his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road, his past identity was that he was Saul of Tarsus, rising star of the Pharisees, persecutor of Christians. After that encounter with Jesus however, his future identity was that he would be called Paul, an adopted son of God, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, a missionary to the Gentiles and the writer of at least one third of the New Testament. Here’s my point. Regardless of who you are and what you’ve done, if you want to come to God, or back to God if that’s your story, on His terms, His arms are wide open for you.
Now granted, that invitation isn’t always pretty, in fact, sometimes that invitation comes with some bumps and bruises. Sometimes God will knock you on your back or orchestrate a catastrophic event to get your attention and extend that invitation to you. Saul was on his way to Damascus and bam! The next thing he knew there was this bright light that knocked him to the ground, followed by revelation, followed by blindness, followed by a restoration of his sight and his life was never the same. Oh, his personality was the same in many ways, he was as educated and as driven as he had always been but now, he was serving a new master and there was a new agenda at play in his life. And, rough as his new life was, frankly, he didn’t regret it. In fact, according to what he wrote later in his life in his letter to the Philippian church regarding his former life, he counted all things, including that former way of life, as worthless, rubbish, sewage, garbage. Skubalon is the Greek word that he used to describe it. Skubalon huh? Wow. It even sounds like a swear word. He said that following Jesus was that much better and considering that, according to his own words in his letter to the Corinthians, since becoming a follower of Jesus he had been beaten with rods three times, shipwrecked three times, stoned and left for dead once, and had lived in constant danger, that’s saying something.
So, coming back to the application point, I guess what I’m getting at is that if life isn’t working for you right now and you’re wondering why God isn’t doing something about it, maybe He is. Maybe what He’s doing is trying to get your attention so you will consider what He’s offering. For the record, He’s probably not offering you untold riches and a carefree life, but He is offering you forgiveness for every wrong thing you have done and will do, and He’s offering you a life with a purpose. He’s also promising never to abandon you, so, what are you going to do about it. Saul, when he came face to face with Jesus, ended up repenting and following Jesus. What will you do though? Saul could only decide for himself, he couldn’t decide for you and it’s the same way with all of us. We can’t decide for each other, we can only decide for ourselves.
Now the question that we need to ask ourselves is what do we have to do in order to follow Jesus and for some of us, especially those of us who grew up attending church regularly, the answer might look something like this. Going back to Saul’s life, consider what he had to do. Saul was self-righteous. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees, a really moral and religious man but he had to come to the realization that none of the religious rituals that he was practicing was making him righteous and acceptable in God’s eyes. The belief that he could save himself by obeying the written law of Moses was probably the greatest sin that he had to repent of. He had to admit that there was nothing that he could do to save himself but that salvation was a gift from God and only by placing his faith in Jesus would he ever be forgiven of his rebellion. And how this applies to us is very similar. If we are thinking that our good deeds that we’ve done are going to make the difference when it comes to being accepted by God, we’re dreaming. God is holy and we aren’t. Like putting one drop of vinegar into a cup of milk to create sour milk, unacceptable to drink, so one sin makes us unacceptable to God forever and puts us in the category of those people who need a savior. We have to admit that and place our faith in Jesus and agree to end our rebellion against God. Will we live perfectly for the rest of our lives? No, we’re going to mess up, multiple times, but what will happen is that we will allow God the Holy Spirit to change us so that we become more and more like Jesus and we will cooperate with Him. It’s a lifelong process by the way. Your other option is to become that bitter and cranky old person who swears like a sailor and hates everyone whether you’re religious or not. I’m not lying …. you know that … we’ve all seen those people. Sometimes they even show up at the family reunion. Anyway, the choice is yours. What are you going to do? Repent and place your faith in Jesus or become Clint Eastwood’s protégé?
Next week, I want to take a look at another paradigm shifting moment, this time with Peter and see what we can glean from it. In the meantime, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. See you next week.
Effective? Yes, however, lest we think that God was limited to just using society’s riffraff to pull off His purposes, consider this next example. The first commandment in the Ten Commandments that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai was that God’s people were to have no other Gods but Him. God wanted an exclusive covenant relationship with His people, still does incidentally but that’s a topic for another post, but the nation of Israel had a tough time obeying that first one. Actually, all of the other nine Commandments too but who’s counting? God was apparently. Anyway, getting back to that First Commandment, throughout their history Israel constantly vacillated between worshiping Yahweh and worshiping whatever local false god was out there. Typically, it was a plurality thing going on. The people would worship Yahweh and Baal, or Molech, or whoever the local neighborhood deity happened to be in order to cover their bases and with God, that created a problem. Yahweh wasn’t sharing turf with anyone or anything, certainly not with some fabricated angry god named Molech who demanded the sacrifice of live children. Anyway, after 600 years or so of putting up with this rebellion, God had had enough. To fix the problem, He used this ultra-authoritarian, egomaniacal monarch named Nebuchadnezzar who hailed straight outta Babylon to conquer the southern kingdom of Judah and ultimately get rid of the idolatry problem that had plagued the nation for generations. For the record, this was not a high point in Israel’s history but God’s patience had reached its end. The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar pretty much leveled the place but, it was necessary because God had to get His chosen people to quit worshiping false gods so, He arranged to have them conquered and scattered throughout Babylon, the most idolatrous nation in existence at the time, where they would get a megadose of idol worship 24/7. They could worship idols to their hearts’ content.
Once again, God’s genius was on display. His plan worked. The Jewish people got sick of worshiping idols and when a small remnant of Israel’s population returned to the land some 70 years later, they had rejected idol worship and for the rest of their history until the Romans deported them in 70 A.D., idol worship was not one of Israel’s problems, they never went back to it. Were Gideon and Nebuchadnezzar unlikely characters for God to use to accomplish His purposes? Absolutely. But they weren’t the only unlikely characters God used in the Bible to accomplish His purposes. There were many other examples. Check out Acts 9 for instance.
Acts 9 begins with Saul still “breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord,” who were scattered throughout the region. Now, it seems that Saul had done a fairly effective job of tracking the saints in Jerusalem and Judea down but he wasn’t satisfied. Wanting to expand his efforts, he went to the high priest asking for letters authorizing him to go to the synagogues in nearby Damascus and, if he found any followers of “The Way,” to bring them back, bound, to Jerusalem. What was the high priest supposed to say to this request? No? Of course not. Permission granted. Write the letters, sign the letters, and send the boy on his way. Go get ‘em Saul. Round up them blasphemers and tie ‘em up and bring ‘em back.
Although Luke didn’t tell us what was going through Saul’s head, logic dictates that Saul was expecting success. After all, he was really good at what he did and he was highly motivated so success was a foregone conclusion. Foregone conclusion, huh? Yeah, about that. Saul and his entourage were just outside of Damascus when suddenly, a bright light shone about him, knocking him to the ground. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” a voice called out.
“Who are you, Lord?”
“I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”
Now the rest of the party saw the light obviously and heard the voice but they didn’t understand what was being said. Apparently, this was a closed-door meeting minus the doors between Jesus and Saul. When things went back to normal Saul got back to his feet but he was left blind by the bright light so he had to be led by the hand into the city. Once he was there, he didn’t eat or drink anything for three days. He just prayed. This was a paradigm shifting moment in Saul’s life as he reevaluated everything that he had previously thought to be true. Although Luke doesn’t say it in his account, I wonder if the words of Gamaliel, Saul’s former teacher, “you will find yourself fighting against God,” weren’t ringing in his ears. I imagine that he experienced a myriad of emotions because the truth of the matter was that what he had been doing was fighting against God.
Meanwhile, in Damascus there was a Jesus follower named Ananias who suddenly was pulled into the story. Jesus appeared to him in a vision. “Ananias.” Jesus called out to him.
“Here I am, Lord.” Ananias replied.
Jesus had a job for him. Ananias was instructed to go to a Straight Street and find a house owned by some guy named Judas and look for a man from Tarsus named Saul who had been praying and had seen in a vision that a man named Ananias would come in and lay hands on him so that he would regain his sight.
Ananias probably gulped a bit and gave God some pushback. “Lord, I have heard of this man, how much damage he did to the Jesus followers in Jerusalem and how he has letters granting him authority to bind and drag any Jesus followers back to Jerusalem.” Ananias gave a pious and respectful answer, by the way. Inside however, he was probably thinking, “You want me to do what!?”
God persisted. “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”
Ananias obeyed. Saul’s sight was restored and He was baptized and the rest was history.
So, what are some practical things that we can pull from this narrative? First, Ananias had guts. Seriously, it took a lot of courage on Ananias’ part to obey God here. Yeah, we know how the story turned out because we can look at the whole thing with 20/20 hindsight. Ananias didn’t have that advantage. He was looking at things in real time and from his vantage point, this looked like a suicide mission but God was insisting that it was going to be okay. Ananias, therefore, had to act in faith and obey.
Now, lest we just give Ananias his rightfully earned kudos and go on our merry way, there’s something else we’d better consider. When it comes to giving out risky mission kinds of assignments, God still does that and when we’re the recipients of His assignment, we must channel our inner Ananias and make a decision. Yep, we have to make a choice. Will we obey Him or not? Will we play it safe and essentially disobey what God is telling us to do or will we step out in faith and obey?
I suppose that an editorial note is probably in order here. At least in the United States, we generally don’t tend to hear an audible voice from God telling us to do something although God certainly can and has with some people. No. Generally, when God tells us to do something we’ll get this annoying thought that just won’t go away, and, although the thought process won’t include the words, “this is God speaking,” we’ll still know darn well who is talking to us. It’s generally that obvious. Now, sometimes, we’ll try and throw up a defense mechanism by giving this churchy response to God and tell Him that we’ll pray about it thinking that if we pray about it long enough that God will get tired of waiting on us and just go away and choose someone else. I don’t know. Maybe that approach works for some people but it never has for me. Bottom line, God’s talking to me and the right thing to do is obvious. When I silence the outside noise and distractions, what it comes down to is that I have a choice between two agendas, mine or God’s and I get to cast the deciding vote. You read me correctly, I do get to cast the deciding vote on what I will do. I don’t, however, get to cast the deciding vote on the consequences of my actions. Those land squarely in God’s lap but here’s what I have learned over the years. There’s this operating principle that governs the affairs of the universe that we’ve all heard of. We reap what we sow, and how it plays out in this situation is that God is responsible for the consequences of my actions when I obey but I am responsible for the consequences of my actions when I disobey. In my experience, if I obey, things work out in the end. However, regarding the consequences if I disobey. Well, let’s just say that I get trucked and leave it at that. It doesn’t usually end well.
The second thing that stands out is that word, “chose,” and the fact that God was the one who said it. “Saul is an instrument that I have chosen,” were God’s exact words when He spoke to Ananias. To my audience who claim to be following Jesus, are you paying attention here? God chose this unlikely vessel and, how this applies to you and me today is this. God is still choosing unlikely vessels to accomplish His purposes as we speak. Off the top of my head, right now I can think of at least ten people who I am following on social media who, ten years ago were unlikely candidates in anyone’s eyes to even be following Jesus much less have a significant ministry and yet today, all of these people have legitimate, significant ministries. God saw in Saul something that no one else saw. And, coming back to 2023, God sees things in everyone in the world that no one else sees. His eyesight and insight are better than 20/20 because face it, He’s God and He doesn’t make mistakes. So, understand this. Every person we meet is a possible candidate for God to choose to use for His purposes. We can’t blow anyone off as impossible because, with God, all things are possible.
Now my last point piggybacks off of the previous paragraph and everyone needs to sit up and take notice. That Saul was an unlikely person to be chosen to play an important role in the early church is quite clear but there’s one other thing that’s even clearer than that. In fact, it’s so obvious that we sometimes miss it because it’s so simple. Saul’s past did not disqualify him from being used by God. As violent as it was, it didn’t disqualify him from being someone who God could use. If it would have been, God, in His infinite wisdom, never would have chosen Saul but He did. And, if He chose Saul for a mission, that means that, regardless of what’s in your backstory, He could choose you as well. Oscar Wilde put it like this. “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future,” and that was certainly true in Saul’s case. Before his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road, his past identity was that he was Saul of Tarsus, rising star of the Pharisees, persecutor of Christians. After that encounter with Jesus however, his future identity was that he would be called Paul, an adopted son of God, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, a missionary to the Gentiles and the writer of at least one third of the New Testament. Here’s my point. Regardless of who you are and what you’ve done, if you want to come to God, or back to God if that’s your story, on His terms, His arms are wide open for you.
Now granted, that invitation isn’t always pretty, in fact, sometimes that invitation comes with some bumps and bruises. Sometimes God will knock you on your back or orchestrate a catastrophic event to get your attention and extend that invitation to you. Saul was on his way to Damascus and bam! The next thing he knew there was this bright light that knocked him to the ground, followed by revelation, followed by blindness, followed by a restoration of his sight and his life was never the same. Oh, his personality was the same in many ways, he was as educated and as driven as he had always been but now, he was serving a new master and there was a new agenda at play in his life. And, rough as his new life was, frankly, he didn’t regret it. In fact, according to what he wrote later in his life in his letter to the Philippian church regarding his former life, he counted all things, including that former way of life, as worthless, rubbish, sewage, garbage. Skubalon is the Greek word that he used to describe it. Skubalon huh? Wow. It even sounds like a swear word. He said that following Jesus was that much better and considering that, according to his own words in his letter to the Corinthians, since becoming a follower of Jesus he had been beaten with rods three times, shipwrecked three times, stoned and left for dead once, and had lived in constant danger, that’s saying something.
So, coming back to the application point, I guess what I’m getting at is that if life isn’t working for you right now and you’re wondering why God isn’t doing something about it, maybe He is. Maybe what He’s doing is trying to get your attention so you will consider what He’s offering. For the record, He’s probably not offering you untold riches and a carefree life, but He is offering you forgiveness for every wrong thing you have done and will do, and He’s offering you a life with a purpose. He’s also promising never to abandon you, so, what are you going to do about it. Saul, when he came face to face with Jesus, ended up repenting and following Jesus. What will you do though? Saul could only decide for himself, he couldn’t decide for you and it’s the same way with all of us. We can’t decide for each other, we can only decide for ourselves.
Now the question that we need to ask ourselves is what do we have to do in order to follow Jesus and for some of us, especially those of us who grew up attending church regularly, the answer might look something like this. Going back to Saul’s life, consider what he had to do. Saul was self-righteous. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees, a really moral and religious man but he had to come to the realization that none of the religious rituals that he was practicing was making him righteous and acceptable in God’s eyes. The belief that he could save himself by obeying the written law of Moses was probably the greatest sin that he had to repent of. He had to admit that there was nothing that he could do to save himself but that salvation was a gift from God and only by placing his faith in Jesus would he ever be forgiven of his rebellion. And how this applies to us is very similar. If we are thinking that our good deeds that we’ve done are going to make the difference when it comes to being accepted by God, we’re dreaming. God is holy and we aren’t. Like putting one drop of vinegar into a cup of milk to create sour milk, unacceptable to drink, so one sin makes us unacceptable to God forever and puts us in the category of those people who need a savior. We have to admit that and place our faith in Jesus and agree to end our rebellion against God. Will we live perfectly for the rest of our lives? No, we’re going to mess up, multiple times, but what will happen is that we will allow God the Holy Spirit to change us so that we become more and more like Jesus and we will cooperate with Him. It’s a lifelong process by the way. Your other option is to become that bitter and cranky old person who swears like a sailor and hates everyone whether you’re religious or not. I’m not lying …. you know that … we’ve all seen those people. Sometimes they even show up at the family reunion. Anyway, the choice is yours. What are you going to do? Repent and place your faith in Jesus or become Clint Eastwood’s protégé?
Next week, I want to take a look at another paradigm shifting moment, this time with Peter and see what we can glean from it. In the meantime, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. See you next week.
Part 18: Acts 10: An Unlikely Choice and a Paradigm Shift (Part 2)
Have you ever had a preconceived notion in your mind of how something is supposed to be and then have it shift 180 degrees? It may be something simple like a preference in what kind of car you prefer or it may be something much more complex, something that rocks a preconceived notion of something perhaps you were taught as a child, right to the core. Social scientists call this experience a paradigm shift and Peter, in Acts 10, had one of those experiences.
Acts 10 begins, not with Peter, but with a Roman centurion in the Italian Cohort named Cornelius, an unlikely choice because not only was he a Gentile, but he was a Roman soldier, a member of the hated empire that occupied Judea. However, Cornelius, in spite of the fact that he was not Jewish, was described as being a devout man who was generous with his finances and prayed continually to God. He was a man who was highly esteemed. As Luke records the story, at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon one day, the Centurion was praying when suddenly he had a vision where an angel of the Lord appeared to him and called him by name. According to Luke, he was terrified. “What is it, Lord?”
Rabbit trail detour here. The fact that Cornelius was terrified is one of those interesting little details that is sometimes overlooked when people read this chapter. Consider this. Cornelius’ day job was that he was a Roman Centurion, a leader of 100 soldiers and, by nature of that position, a man who had probably been tested in battle many times. Connect the dots here. With that resume, it would have taken a lot to scare him. However, upon seeing a messenger from God, an angel, he was terrified. My guess is that he found himself face to face with someone who had more power than he could imagine and he knew that he was no match for this being. How this applies to you and me is simple. As I observe how casually we approach God sometimes, perhaps we should reconsider who we are dealing with and up our game a bit, and give God the reverence He’s due when we approach Him, don’t you think? Remember, the same God who loves us unconditionally is also the God who easily willed the world into existence and has no rivals anywhere and if His angels are enough to scare a hardened Roman Centurion and He’s infinitely more powerful than any angel …. Catch my drift?
Anyway, the angel reassured Cornelius that everything was okay because his prayers had been heard by God and God was ready to answer them. He then issued Cornelius his marching orders. The Centurion was to send for “a man named Peter,” who was staying in Joppa, a town that was about 50 miles to the south. The Centurion summoned two of his trusted servants and a devout soldier from his ranks and sent for Peter.
Meanwhile, the next day at about noon in Joppa, Peter was upstairs praying when he fell into a trance and he had this really bizarre vision, a much more bizarre vision than Cornelius had the previous day if the truth be told. He saw heaven open up and something like a sheet descending with all kinds of animals on it that were ceremonially unclean. Now, it was right before lunch and Peter was famished and a voice told him to rise up, kill, and eat. This raised all kinds of red flags for Peter. As a devout Jew, he knew that the Jewish law explicitly forbade him to eat unclean animals and he pushed back. “No Lord,” he said. “I have never eaten anything unclean.”
God’s response was, “what God has called clean, do not call common.” This had to leave Peter bewildered because what he was being told to do clearly was contrary to what was written in the Law of Moses.
This sequence of events happened three times and although Peter didn’t understand exactly what God was telling him, this much he knew, because God had emphasized it three times, whatever it was, it was open and shut. Something that we should always remember is that when God says something once, it’s important and we should listen but when He repeats Himself, like three times, it’s a done deal.
About this time, as Peter pondered what all of this could mean, the men sent by Cornelius arrived looking for him. Luke records that the Holy Spirit told Peter that God had sent them and that he should go with them, which he did.
Two days later, Peter, and a party of other Jesus followers who had accompanied him, arrived at Cornelius’ residence where Cornelius and his entire family, along with his close friends, were waiting for him. Luke described it as a fairly large gathering of people. When they were inside, Peter addressed the crowd. “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So, when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me.”
Cornelius told Peter about what had happened four days earlier and after hearing what the Centurion had to say, Peter opened his mouth as the lights went on inside his head. “I see now that God shows no partiality when it comes to people and it doesn’t matter what nation a person is from. If that person fears God and does what is right, God will accept them.”
He then proceeded to tell them the message of Jesus Christ starting with when Jesus was baptized by John. As Peter spoke, the events that followed absolutely amazed him and the Jewish believers who had accompanied him. The Holy Spirit came upon the Gentiles who were listening and suddenly, the events at Pentecost were repeated as the Gentiles in the room began speaking in languages not their own and exalting God. Peter, upon seeing this, asked those with him if anyone could withhold baptizing these people since they had now received the Holy Spirit just as the Jewish believers had. It was probably a rhetorical question and the Gentile believers were baptized.
In terms of application points in this story, I want to focus on just one major point. Jesus is for everyone of both genders from every race. He’s 100% exclusive in that He’s the only way that someone can be reconciled to God the Father but He’s 100% inclusive in that His message is for everyone in the entire world. This was a realization that would change Peter and the rest of the church forever.
Now, to clearly understand what was happening we need to look at things from Peter’s perspective before he had that vision. Until then, as far as Peter and the rest of the early church leaders were concerned, in order for someone to be accepted by God, they had to accept Jesus as Savior and Lord and ... they had to become culturally Jewish. To put it another way, along with accepting Jesus as the promised Messiah and placing their faith in Him, they had to obey the Jewish laws and customs, which there were a lot of them, they could only eat clean foods, and the really big one, they had to be circumcised. Yeah, about that. In a 48-hour period that whole notion got flipped on its ear. In a vision, God declared that anyone who was seeking Him with all their heart would be accepted if they came to God on His terms. Then, two days later the Holy Spirit was given to all who would repent and follow Jesus, whether they were circumcised or not. Make no mistake about this, this was a huge paradigm shift and the lessons the early church learned that day are still in play now.
Yep, those lessons that Peter and his colleagues learned 2000 years ago are still applicable today. Kickstands up folks. It’s time to glean us some application points. To my church attending readers, look at the evidence here and see what it says to us. Like Peter and the early church, we have this tendency to think that in order for someone to become a Jesus follower, they have to do it like we do. They gotta become just like us and we leave very little room for cultural differences which frankly, in light of the fact that there are seven billion people on the earth today, is just absurd. Read the Bible. If anyone is willing to repent and accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, they are accepted into God’s family, just as we are. The Holy Spirit lives within them just like He does us and He’s in the process of transforming them just like He’s doing with us. Will the transformation in their lives be an overnight transformation? I doubt it. It wasn’t with us so what makes you believe that it will be any different with them? Sanctification, (the process by which a person becomes more like Jesus in character and action for those of you non church attenders reading this) is a lifelong process. It can be slow, it can be tedious and it can be and often is, really messy. Their worship will look different, their political views might be different although they might change over time. Then again, maybe they won’t. And these differences will be even more marked if the people in question are from other countries, especially if they are still living there.
Here’s the deal. God’s on a rescue mission and He is in the process of calling people from all walks of life and He’s not at all deterred by their current walk of life or even if they are actively seeking Him so it would appear. Yes, Cornelius was devout and was seeking to please God but go back one chapter, Saul wasn’t. Okay, let me take that back. Saul was seeking Jesus but not for those reasons. He wanted to kill every Jesus follower he could find. My point is though, God the Holy Spirit is infiltrating every demographic of society worldwide and calling people from every walk of life to repent and follow Jesus. He’s calling religious church goers, He’s calling hardened atheists and agnostics, He’s calling Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. He’s calling Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Indians, French citizens, and people from Colombia just to name a few. He’s infiltrating all political parties. He’s calling Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives, Labor, the Nationalist Party, the Socialist Party and every other political party in the world. He’s calling straight heterosexuals and those who would identify within the LGBTQ community to repent and follow Jesus. He’s calling people with all kinds of moral failings and flaws to follow Him. He’s calling human traffickers, prostitutes, drug traffickers, all participants in the adult entertainment industry, along with the other 3 to 4 billion people whose categories I haven’t mentioned to repent and follow Jesus. In terms of His offer of salvation, because all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God, it’s available to everyone. In that respect, it’s an all-inclusive invitation.
Now, that being said though, there’s one other side of the coin, and I would be amiss not to address it so hear me clearly and understand this because what’s written in the Bible is crystal clear. If you want to follow Jesus you have to be willing to turn your back on your sin and rebellion against God. It’s called repentance and, as one examines the life and ministry of Jesus, it becomes clear that it’s a pivotal part of His message. In fact, it was the first thing said. “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” were His exact words. Let me put it another way. If you choose to follow Jesus, be ready for Him to change your life because it’s what He’s going to do. It just comes with the territory. If you choose to follow Jesus, Jesus will change your life. I’ve heard it said like this. If our life was an automobile, when we choose to follow Jesus, He doesn’t do a tune up, He does a total overhaul. Here’s what it looks like. The Holy Spirit will persistently point out things that offend Him and the standard that He will use is what is written in the Bible, both the Old and New Testament. For example, He’s going to demand that you love the very people right now that you hate. He’s going to point you to passages like when Jesus was hanging on the cross, stripped naked in excruciating pain praying in earnest, “Father, forgive them for they don’t understand what they are doing.” One of the people for whom He was praying for was the High Priest, the person who authorized Him to be sent to Pilate so that He would be crucified. And, for the record, there’s no evidence that that High Priest ever repented and became a Jesus follower. And, the Holy Spirit will throw verses like, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God,” into your face. As Jesus told His audiences during His ministry on earth, count the cost because if you choose to follow Jesus, yes, He will love you and give you a total pardon for all of your rebellion against God, but He will also change your life. It’s a package deal.
There’s also one last thing that I need to mention as well before I wrap things up. Scripture is also clear that following Jesus is the only way to be reconciled to God. In that sense, Christianity is an exclusive faith. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He also claimed to be God and this is significant because it ties right in with the fact that He is the only way to reach God. But the other religions in the world just don’t measure up. If you look at all of the other major religions of the world, you will find they have these two things in common. First, their founder is human, never claims to be God, and secondly, their philosophy for how to be accepted by God is to work hard and improve yourself. Each of the other religions has their variations on this theme but at its core, that’s what it is. Basically, they all say to follow these rituals which vary from religion to religion and some are actually opposed to each other, just sayin’, work really hard and do good stuff and you’ll be accepted by God …. maybe.
Jesus, on the other hand, says this. I am God, the second person of the Trinity. I am in essence, God, just as God the Father is God and God the Holy Spirit is God. Your rebellion against God has caused a separation between you and God which is a big problem for you. You can’t save yourself no matter how hard you try so I will do it for you. I am the only one qualified to pay that penalty and because I love you, I took the punishment so you, if you choose to follow Me, won’t have to. You have to place your faith in me and regarding this business of doing good things and changing your life so it looks like mine, I will change you once you decide to follow Me, you just have to cooperate with Me. If you choose not to follow Me though, there is no hope for you. There is no other sacrifice that God the Father will accept except Me.
So, the choice is ours. Will we choose to follow Jesus or not. The invitation is open to us regardless of who we are, where we’re from or what we’ve done. We have to be willing to repent and follow though. One thing that’s clear about Cornelius and his household is that they were ready to follow Jesus. The question for us though is, are we? It’s serious stuff. Next week, I want to take a look at what Peter actually said to Cornelius and his friends when he preached to them. In the meantime, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. See you next week.
Acts 10 begins, not with Peter, but with a Roman centurion in the Italian Cohort named Cornelius, an unlikely choice because not only was he a Gentile, but he was a Roman soldier, a member of the hated empire that occupied Judea. However, Cornelius, in spite of the fact that he was not Jewish, was described as being a devout man who was generous with his finances and prayed continually to God. He was a man who was highly esteemed. As Luke records the story, at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon one day, the Centurion was praying when suddenly he had a vision where an angel of the Lord appeared to him and called him by name. According to Luke, he was terrified. “What is it, Lord?”
Rabbit trail detour here. The fact that Cornelius was terrified is one of those interesting little details that is sometimes overlooked when people read this chapter. Consider this. Cornelius’ day job was that he was a Roman Centurion, a leader of 100 soldiers and, by nature of that position, a man who had probably been tested in battle many times. Connect the dots here. With that resume, it would have taken a lot to scare him. However, upon seeing a messenger from God, an angel, he was terrified. My guess is that he found himself face to face with someone who had more power than he could imagine and he knew that he was no match for this being. How this applies to you and me is simple. As I observe how casually we approach God sometimes, perhaps we should reconsider who we are dealing with and up our game a bit, and give God the reverence He’s due when we approach Him, don’t you think? Remember, the same God who loves us unconditionally is also the God who easily willed the world into existence and has no rivals anywhere and if His angels are enough to scare a hardened Roman Centurion and He’s infinitely more powerful than any angel …. Catch my drift?
Anyway, the angel reassured Cornelius that everything was okay because his prayers had been heard by God and God was ready to answer them. He then issued Cornelius his marching orders. The Centurion was to send for “a man named Peter,” who was staying in Joppa, a town that was about 50 miles to the south. The Centurion summoned two of his trusted servants and a devout soldier from his ranks and sent for Peter.
Meanwhile, the next day at about noon in Joppa, Peter was upstairs praying when he fell into a trance and he had this really bizarre vision, a much more bizarre vision than Cornelius had the previous day if the truth be told. He saw heaven open up and something like a sheet descending with all kinds of animals on it that were ceremonially unclean. Now, it was right before lunch and Peter was famished and a voice told him to rise up, kill, and eat. This raised all kinds of red flags for Peter. As a devout Jew, he knew that the Jewish law explicitly forbade him to eat unclean animals and he pushed back. “No Lord,” he said. “I have never eaten anything unclean.”
God’s response was, “what God has called clean, do not call common.” This had to leave Peter bewildered because what he was being told to do clearly was contrary to what was written in the Law of Moses.
This sequence of events happened three times and although Peter didn’t understand exactly what God was telling him, this much he knew, because God had emphasized it three times, whatever it was, it was open and shut. Something that we should always remember is that when God says something once, it’s important and we should listen but when He repeats Himself, like three times, it’s a done deal.
About this time, as Peter pondered what all of this could mean, the men sent by Cornelius arrived looking for him. Luke records that the Holy Spirit told Peter that God had sent them and that he should go with them, which he did.
Two days later, Peter, and a party of other Jesus followers who had accompanied him, arrived at Cornelius’ residence where Cornelius and his entire family, along with his close friends, were waiting for him. Luke described it as a fairly large gathering of people. When they were inside, Peter addressed the crowd. “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So, when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me.”
Cornelius told Peter about what had happened four days earlier and after hearing what the Centurion had to say, Peter opened his mouth as the lights went on inside his head. “I see now that God shows no partiality when it comes to people and it doesn’t matter what nation a person is from. If that person fears God and does what is right, God will accept them.”
He then proceeded to tell them the message of Jesus Christ starting with when Jesus was baptized by John. As Peter spoke, the events that followed absolutely amazed him and the Jewish believers who had accompanied him. The Holy Spirit came upon the Gentiles who were listening and suddenly, the events at Pentecost were repeated as the Gentiles in the room began speaking in languages not their own and exalting God. Peter, upon seeing this, asked those with him if anyone could withhold baptizing these people since they had now received the Holy Spirit just as the Jewish believers had. It was probably a rhetorical question and the Gentile believers were baptized.
In terms of application points in this story, I want to focus on just one major point. Jesus is for everyone of both genders from every race. He’s 100% exclusive in that He’s the only way that someone can be reconciled to God the Father but He’s 100% inclusive in that His message is for everyone in the entire world. This was a realization that would change Peter and the rest of the church forever.
Now, to clearly understand what was happening we need to look at things from Peter’s perspective before he had that vision. Until then, as far as Peter and the rest of the early church leaders were concerned, in order for someone to be accepted by God, they had to accept Jesus as Savior and Lord and ... they had to become culturally Jewish. To put it another way, along with accepting Jesus as the promised Messiah and placing their faith in Him, they had to obey the Jewish laws and customs, which there were a lot of them, they could only eat clean foods, and the really big one, they had to be circumcised. Yeah, about that. In a 48-hour period that whole notion got flipped on its ear. In a vision, God declared that anyone who was seeking Him with all their heart would be accepted if they came to God on His terms. Then, two days later the Holy Spirit was given to all who would repent and follow Jesus, whether they were circumcised or not. Make no mistake about this, this was a huge paradigm shift and the lessons the early church learned that day are still in play now.
Yep, those lessons that Peter and his colleagues learned 2000 years ago are still applicable today. Kickstands up folks. It’s time to glean us some application points. To my church attending readers, look at the evidence here and see what it says to us. Like Peter and the early church, we have this tendency to think that in order for someone to become a Jesus follower, they have to do it like we do. They gotta become just like us and we leave very little room for cultural differences which frankly, in light of the fact that there are seven billion people on the earth today, is just absurd. Read the Bible. If anyone is willing to repent and accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, they are accepted into God’s family, just as we are. The Holy Spirit lives within them just like He does us and He’s in the process of transforming them just like He’s doing with us. Will the transformation in their lives be an overnight transformation? I doubt it. It wasn’t with us so what makes you believe that it will be any different with them? Sanctification, (the process by which a person becomes more like Jesus in character and action for those of you non church attenders reading this) is a lifelong process. It can be slow, it can be tedious and it can be and often is, really messy. Their worship will look different, their political views might be different although they might change over time. Then again, maybe they won’t. And these differences will be even more marked if the people in question are from other countries, especially if they are still living there.
Here’s the deal. God’s on a rescue mission and He is in the process of calling people from all walks of life and He’s not at all deterred by their current walk of life or even if they are actively seeking Him so it would appear. Yes, Cornelius was devout and was seeking to please God but go back one chapter, Saul wasn’t. Okay, let me take that back. Saul was seeking Jesus but not for those reasons. He wanted to kill every Jesus follower he could find. My point is though, God the Holy Spirit is infiltrating every demographic of society worldwide and calling people from every walk of life to repent and follow Jesus. He’s calling religious church goers, He’s calling hardened atheists and agnostics, He’s calling Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. He’s calling Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Indians, French citizens, and people from Colombia just to name a few. He’s infiltrating all political parties. He’s calling Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives, Labor, the Nationalist Party, the Socialist Party and every other political party in the world. He’s calling straight heterosexuals and those who would identify within the LGBTQ community to repent and follow Jesus. He’s calling people with all kinds of moral failings and flaws to follow Him. He’s calling human traffickers, prostitutes, drug traffickers, all participants in the adult entertainment industry, along with the other 3 to 4 billion people whose categories I haven’t mentioned to repent and follow Jesus. In terms of His offer of salvation, because all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God, it’s available to everyone. In that respect, it’s an all-inclusive invitation.
Now, that being said though, there’s one other side of the coin, and I would be amiss not to address it so hear me clearly and understand this because what’s written in the Bible is crystal clear. If you want to follow Jesus you have to be willing to turn your back on your sin and rebellion against God. It’s called repentance and, as one examines the life and ministry of Jesus, it becomes clear that it’s a pivotal part of His message. In fact, it was the first thing said. “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” were His exact words. Let me put it another way. If you choose to follow Jesus, be ready for Him to change your life because it’s what He’s going to do. It just comes with the territory. If you choose to follow Jesus, Jesus will change your life. I’ve heard it said like this. If our life was an automobile, when we choose to follow Jesus, He doesn’t do a tune up, He does a total overhaul. Here’s what it looks like. The Holy Spirit will persistently point out things that offend Him and the standard that He will use is what is written in the Bible, both the Old and New Testament. For example, He’s going to demand that you love the very people right now that you hate. He’s going to point you to passages like when Jesus was hanging on the cross, stripped naked in excruciating pain praying in earnest, “Father, forgive them for they don’t understand what they are doing.” One of the people for whom He was praying for was the High Priest, the person who authorized Him to be sent to Pilate so that He would be crucified. And, for the record, there’s no evidence that that High Priest ever repented and became a Jesus follower. And, the Holy Spirit will throw verses like, “Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God,” into your face. As Jesus told His audiences during His ministry on earth, count the cost because if you choose to follow Jesus, yes, He will love you and give you a total pardon for all of your rebellion against God, but He will also change your life. It’s a package deal.
There’s also one last thing that I need to mention as well before I wrap things up. Scripture is also clear that following Jesus is the only way to be reconciled to God. In that sense, Christianity is an exclusive faith. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He also claimed to be God and this is significant because it ties right in with the fact that He is the only way to reach God. But the other religions in the world just don’t measure up. If you look at all of the other major religions of the world, you will find they have these two things in common. First, their founder is human, never claims to be God, and secondly, their philosophy for how to be accepted by God is to work hard and improve yourself. Each of the other religions has their variations on this theme but at its core, that’s what it is. Basically, they all say to follow these rituals which vary from religion to religion and some are actually opposed to each other, just sayin’, work really hard and do good stuff and you’ll be accepted by God …. maybe.
Jesus, on the other hand, says this. I am God, the second person of the Trinity. I am in essence, God, just as God the Father is God and God the Holy Spirit is God. Your rebellion against God has caused a separation between you and God which is a big problem for you. You can’t save yourself no matter how hard you try so I will do it for you. I am the only one qualified to pay that penalty and because I love you, I took the punishment so you, if you choose to follow Me, won’t have to. You have to place your faith in me and regarding this business of doing good things and changing your life so it looks like mine, I will change you once you decide to follow Me, you just have to cooperate with Me. If you choose not to follow Me though, there is no hope for you. There is no other sacrifice that God the Father will accept except Me.
So, the choice is ours. Will we choose to follow Jesus or not. The invitation is open to us regardless of who we are, where we’re from or what we’ve done. We have to be willing to repent and follow though. One thing that’s clear about Cornelius and his household is that they were ready to follow Jesus. The question for us though is, are we? It’s serious stuff. Next week, I want to take a look at what Peter actually said to Cornelius and his friends when he preached to them. In the meantime, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. See you next week.
Part 19: Acts 10: Peter’s Message
One of the things that I appreciated about Luke when he gave a written account of events that happened in Acts is how accurate he was and how much he tended to pay attention to detail. He was a doctor by trade and a historian by hobby and, based on his writing style, a man who liked to write things down in an organized and orderly manner which is good for us because reading his writing 2000 years later, it gives us a clear picture of what happened. He wrote about historical events, trials, and several sermons and one of the sermons that he recorded was the sermon that Peter preached to Cornelius and his household in Acts 10. Let’s break it down and see what the man said.
Picking up the account at Acts 10:34, “Peter then said: ‘Now I am certain that God treats all people alike. 35God is pleased with everyone who worships him and does right, no matter what nation they come from. 36This is the same message that God gave to the people of Israel, when he sent Jesus Christ, the Lord of all, to offer peace to them. 37You surely know what happened everywhere in Judea. It all began in Galilee after John had told everyone to be baptized. 38God gave the Holy Spirit and power to Jesus from Nazareth. He was with Jesus, as he went around doing good and healing everyone who was under the power of the devil. 39We all saw what Jesus did both in Israel and in the city of Jerusalem. Jesus was put to death on a cross. 40But three days later, God raised him to life and let him be seen. 41Not everyone saw him. He was seen only by us, who ate and drank with him after he was raised from death. We were the ones God chose to tell others about him. 42God told us to announce clearly to the people that Jesus is the one he has chosen to judge the living and the dead. 43Every one of the prophets has said that all who have faith in Jesus will have their sins forgiven in his name.’”
The first thing to notice about this sermon is that it gives us a clear understanding of what Peter was thinking about both God the Father and Jesus Christ regarding how they treat people. The first thing that he said was, “God treats all people alike.” Another way to put it is like this, God doesn’t play favorites. He sees into the hearts of people, discerns their motives, and then evaluates accordingly. This is an important thing to remember because, like it or not, we practice favoritism. We don’t mean to but sometimes we can’t seem to help ourselves. We do play favorites and where this gets hypocritically ugly are the times when we are much more tolerant of any questionable or even morally wrong behavior of people who are like us than we are of those who aren’t like us. It doesn’t matter what is written in the Bible or even what Jesus actually said, if the offenders in question are like us, on our team, whatever that team is, we can find a way to turn a blind eye to it.
“God is pleased with everyone who worships him and does right.” To understand what Peter was saying here and how it specifically applied to the whole narrative, we need to go back to the first part of Acts 10 where Luke introduced Cornelius to his readers. In Acts 10:2, Cornelius was described as being devout, a man who took God intelligently and seriously and he chose to let this devotion to God dictate how he lived his daily life. It wasn’t just him though, he influenced those in his household to do the same. He was generous and from his own private resources he gave to the poor and he prayed regularly. Prayer was an important part of his daily routine. Another way to put it perhaps is like this. Cornelius created a culture in his household where God was given the honor He was due and the daily affairs throughout his household reflected that.
“He (God) sent Jesus Christ, the Lord of all, to offer peace to them.” The obvious question is, who is the “them” referred to here? It’s especially those who are seeking God and, I think that it’s important to note here, these people are not seeking a god of their own making or design but rather the God whom the Bible reveals. And, if I could admonish my church going readers for a minute, as you are exploring what God is like, don’t just cherry pick the Bible for verses regarding what God is like to prop up your personal political, cultural, or social preferences, read the whole Bible. Candid observation here. As regular church attenders on both the right and left of the political spectrum, we are just as capable of worshiping a god of our own making as are the unchurched, we just do it differently is all.
A second thing to note here is that Jesus is offering peace to those who are sincerely seeking Him. The word for peace here denotes a holistic wellness and well-being for all who are seeking Him. In other words, if someone is intelligently seeking God, regardless of their backstory, God will not turn them away.
The other thing about Jesus here is that Peter described Him as “the Lord of all.” The Greek word for Lord that Peter used here in cultural context, is absolutely profound. It’s not just a cutesy title spoken as polite courtesy. No, not at all. It’s a word that is ripe with authority. It means that the person who it is describing is the ultimate authority and has ownership rights, and, in the case of Jesus, complete with the authority to dictate policy and behavior at all levels of government and society worldwide. And, based on what Peter said in verse 38, “God gave the Holy Spirit and power to Jesus......He went around doing good and healing those who were under the power of the devil,” so, it’s quite clear when Jesus walked the earth the first time, He was not only on a rescue mission but He was also on a mission to take back what is rightfully His. Now, fast forward to when Jesus returns, which He will, paraphrasing Dr. Tony Evans, when Jesus returns, He’s not coming back to take sides, He’s coming back to take over.
Another thing that Peter did was that he appealed to eyewitness accounts which is what the early followers of Jesus always did as they told their story of Jesus. “We saw what He did...we saw Him put to death with our own eyes...He was raised from the dead by God the Father...we ate and drank with Him after He was raised from the dead.” He emphasized that He was there in the middle of it. Ask any lawyer and they will tell you, eyewitness testimony is a powerful testimony that, when verified, stands the test of time. In other words, if it was true back then, it’s still true today. To the skeptics who are reading this, if you want to explain away the resurrection as myth or fable, you have to prove that Peter and the rest of the Apostles were lying, which is a tall order because with the exception of the Apostle John, all of these men died martyrs deaths and the reason they were martyred was the fact that they claimed that they had seen Jesus after He was raised from the dead. For the record, the only reason that John wasn’t martyred was that he lived through his execution sentence. He was boiled in oil and somehow survived it. He ended up banished on the Island of Patmos.
Peter also said, “we were the ones God chose to tell others about him. God told us to announce clearly to the people that Jesus is the one He has chosen to judge the living and the dead. Every one of the prophets has said that all who have faith in Jesus will have their sins forgiven in His name.’”
Peter also said that God appointed Jesus to be the judge of both the living and the dead. What that will look like, if one goes back to the Sermon on the Mount that’s recorded in Matthew 5 – 7, is that Jesus will be the one who will make the decision regarding who will enter into heaven in the end and who will be sent to spend eternity in hell. (I’m not making this up. In Matthew 7:21 – 23, Matthew quotes Jesus, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and, in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”) In other words, Jesus was not just a man, or a wise teacher, He’s God and He’s the ultimate authority. Candid observation, even in the church we don’t tend to think of that fact as seriously as we should. If we did, we might live differently.
Lastly however, this judgement that Peter referred to will be much different from the usual judgement that one would receive in a court of law of any kind, because it was understood that everyone who had ever lived was guilty, but there was a way out, a way of salvation. Peter said that anyone who placed their faith in Jesus will have their sins forgiven in Jesus’ name. Faith in Jesus. Don’t just pass over that but contemplate it for a minute. Is it really necessary for everyone? Go back to Acts 10:2 where Luke introduced Cornelius to us. Cornelius was described as devout, a man who sought God and who honored him with his resources. Wasn’t that enough? Weren’t all of the good things that he did and was doing enough? No, it wasn’t. Cornelius needed a savior just like everyone else. He had to place his faith, his trust, in Jesus and, if this was true for Cornelius, it’s true for us as well.
As we saw two weeks ago, what followed after that was that the Holy Spirit was given to Cornelius and his household and they began speaking in languages not their own, the same way that it happened at Pentecost several years earlier. And then they were baptized, and I should clarify something here. Yes, baptism was one of the sacraments that Jesus had commanded to be observed which is why they were baptized but, it wasn’t what saved these people. Faith in Jesus is what saved them and was what gave them forgiveness from God. I can state that confidently because the text is clear here on this one. Note the order here. Cornelius and his household were given the gift of the Holy Spirit, then they were baptized, not the other way around. What baptism was, and still is, is a symbolic act that signified not only an identification with Jesus but also signified an all-in commitment to following Jesus. When these people were baptized, what they were saying was that they were fully committed followers of Jesus and that His agenda and no longer their own was the agenda that was in play in their lives.
So, what does this mean for us? It’s pretty simple really. Jesus is the One who will determine where we will spend eternity and the determining factor will be whether we will place our faith in Him or not. Going back to what He said on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, the people who He turned away were people who had done a lot of religious stuff but were relying on their own merits to gain God’s favor. It didn’t work for them and it won’t work for us either. Yes, Jesus followers are expected to do good deeds but the good deeds are a result of the fact that we have been forgiven, not as a vehicle to gain God’s forgiveness and acceptance. Only by placing our faith in Jesus can we be forgiven. As we look throughout the New Testament, it’s the same message over and over again. How we express our faith in Jesus is most easily done through prayer as we admit to God that we have rebelled against Him and violated His laws and that we are desiring to end that rebellion once and for all. We tell Him that we agree with His assessment of us that we are guilty and deserve to be separated from Him for all eternity. We also tell Him that although we know that we can’t save ourselves that we, through faith, accept Jesus as our Savior and that we are surrendering ourselves to Him. It’s an authority issue at the end of the day. We can either admit that we’re guilty of rebelling against God or we can call God a liar. And, continuing with this train of thought, we can either rebel against God and serve ourselves or we can end our rebellion against God and serve Him. The only thing that we can’t do is serve ourselves and serve God and ourselves. Like driving a car, there’s only room for one person in the driver’s seat and God is patiently waiting for us to decide who will sit in it.
So, the choice is ours. Will we choose to follow Jesus or not. The invitation is open to us regardless of who we are, where we’re from or what we’ve done. In order to take Him up on it however, we have to be willing to repent and follow though. Jesus was quite clear on this point. Next week I'm going to wrap up Peter's part of the story as recorded in Acts. In the meantime, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. See you next week.
Picking up the account at Acts 10:34, “Peter then said: ‘Now I am certain that God treats all people alike. 35God is pleased with everyone who worships him and does right, no matter what nation they come from. 36This is the same message that God gave to the people of Israel, when he sent Jesus Christ, the Lord of all, to offer peace to them. 37You surely know what happened everywhere in Judea. It all began in Galilee after John had told everyone to be baptized. 38God gave the Holy Spirit and power to Jesus from Nazareth. He was with Jesus, as he went around doing good and healing everyone who was under the power of the devil. 39We all saw what Jesus did both in Israel and in the city of Jerusalem. Jesus was put to death on a cross. 40But three days later, God raised him to life and let him be seen. 41Not everyone saw him. He was seen only by us, who ate and drank with him after he was raised from death. We were the ones God chose to tell others about him. 42God told us to announce clearly to the people that Jesus is the one he has chosen to judge the living and the dead. 43Every one of the prophets has said that all who have faith in Jesus will have their sins forgiven in his name.’”
The first thing to notice about this sermon is that it gives us a clear understanding of what Peter was thinking about both God the Father and Jesus Christ regarding how they treat people. The first thing that he said was, “God treats all people alike.” Another way to put it is like this, God doesn’t play favorites. He sees into the hearts of people, discerns their motives, and then evaluates accordingly. This is an important thing to remember because, like it or not, we practice favoritism. We don’t mean to but sometimes we can’t seem to help ourselves. We do play favorites and where this gets hypocritically ugly are the times when we are much more tolerant of any questionable or even morally wrong behavior of people who are like us than we are of those who aren’t like us. It doesn’t matter what is written in the Bible or even what Jesus actually said, if the offenders in question are like us, on our team, whatever that team is, we can find a way to turn a blind eye to it.
“God is pleased with everyone who worships him and does right.” To understand what Peter was saying here and how it specifically applied to the whole narrative, we need to go back to the first part of Acts 10 where Luke introduced Cornelius to his readers. In Acts 10:2, Cornelius was described as being devout, a man who took God intelligently and seriously and he chose to let this devotion to God dictate how he lived his daily life. It wasn’t just him though, he influenced those in his household to do the same. He was generous and from his own private resources he gave to the poor and he prayed regularly. Prayer was an important part of his daily routine. Another way to put it perhaps is like this. Cornelius created a culture in his household where God was given the honor He was due and the daily affairs throughout his household reflected that.
“He (God) sent Jesus Christ, the Lord of all, to offer peace to them.” The obvious question is, who is the “them” referred to here? It’s especially those who are seeking God and, I think that it’s important to note here, these people are not seeking a god of their own making or design but rather the God whom the Bible reveals. And, if I could admonish my church going readers for a minute, as you are exploring what God is like, don’t just cherry pick the Bible for verses regarding what God is like to prop up your personal political, cultural, or social preferences, read the whole Bible. Candid observation here. As regular church attenders on both the right and left of the political spectrum, we are just as capable of worshiping a god of our own making as are the unchurched, we just do it differently is all.
A second thing to note here is that Jesus is offering peace to those who are sincerely seeking Him. The word for peace here denotes a holistic wellness and well-being for all who are seeking Him. In other words, if someone is intelligently seeking God, regardless of their backstory, God will not turn them away.
The other thing about Jesus here is that Peter described Him as “the Lord of all.” The Greek word for Lord that Peter used here in cultural context, is absolutely profound. It’s not just a cutesy title spoken as polite courtesy. No, not at all. It’s a word that is ripe with authority. It means that the person who it is describing is the ultimate authority and has ownership rights, and, in the case of Jesus, complete with the authority to dictate policy and behavior at all levels of government and society worldwide. And, based on what Peter said in verse 38, “God gave the Holy Spirit and power to Jesus......He went around doing good and healing those who were under the power of the devil,” so, it’s quite clear when Jesus walked the earth the first time, He was not only on a rescue mission but He was also on a mission to take back what is rightfully His. Now, fast forward to when Jesus returns, which He will, paraphrasing Dr. Tony Evans, when Jesus returns, He’s not coming back to take sides, He’s coming back to take over.
Another thing that Peter did was that he appealed to eyewitness accounts which is what the early followers of Jesus always did as they told their story of Jesus. “We saw what He did...we saw Him put to death with our own eyes...He was raised from the dead by God the Father...we ate and drank with Him after He was raised from the dead.” He emphasized that He was there in the middle of it. Ask any lawyer and they will tell you, eyewitness testimony is a powerful testimony that, when verified, stands the test of time. In other words, if it was true back then, it’s still true today. To the skeptics who are reading this, if you want to explain away the resurrection as myth or fable, you have to prove that Peter and the rest of the Apostles were lying, which is a tall order because with the exception of the Apostle John, all of these men died martyrs deaths and the reason they were martyred was the fact that they claimed that they had seen Jesus after He was raised from the dead. For the record, the only reason that John wasn’t martyred was that he lived through his execution sentence. He was boiled in oil and somehow survived it. He ended up banished on the Island of Patmos.
Peter also said, “we were the ones God chose to tell others about him. God told us to announce clearly to the people that Jesus is the one He has chosen to judge the living and the dead. Every one of the prophets has said that all who have faith in Jesus will have their sins forgiven in His name.’”
Peter also said that God appointed Jesus to be the judge of both the living and the dead. What that will look like, if one goes back to the Sermon on the Mount that’s recorded in Matthew 5 – 7, is that Jesus will be the one who will make the decision regarding who will enter into heaven in the end and who will be sent to spend eternity in hell. (I’m not making this up. In Matthew 7:21 – 23, Matthew quotes Jesus, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and, in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”) In other words, Jesus was not just a man, or a wise teacher, He’s God and He’s the ultimate authority. Candid observation, even in the church we don’t tend to think of that fact as seriously as we should. If we did, we might live differently.
Lastly however, this judgement that Peter referred to will be much different from the usual judgement that one would receive in a court of law of any kind, because it was understood that everyone who had ever lived was guilty, but there was a way out, a way of salvation. Peter said that anyone who placed their faith in Jesus will have their sins forgiven in Jesus’ name. Faith in Jesus. Don’t just pass over that but contemplate it for a minute. Is it really necessary for everyone? Go back to Acts 10:2 where Luke introduced Cornelius to us. Cornelius was described as devout, a man who sought God and who honored him with his resources. Wasn’t that enough? Weren’t all of the good things that he did and was doing enough? No, it wasn’t. Cornelius needed a savior just like everyone else. He had to place his faith, his trust, in Jesus and, if this was true for Cornelius, it’s true for us as well.
As we saw two weeks ago, what followed after that was that the Holy Spirit was given to Cornelius and his household and they began speaking in languages not their own, the same way that it happened at Pentecost several years earlier. And then they were baptized, and I should clarify something here. Yes, baptism was one of the sacraments that Jesus had commanded to be observed which is why they were baptized but, it wasn’t what saved these people. Faith in Jesus is what saved them and was what gave them forgiveness from God. I can state that confidently because the text is clear here on this one. Note the order here. Cornelius and his household were given the gift of the Holy Spirit, then they were baptized, not the other way around. What baptism was, and still is, is a symbolic act that signified not only an identification with Jesus but also signified an all-in commitment to following Jesus. When these people were baptized, what they were saying was that they were fully committed followers of Jesus and that His agenda and no longer their own was the agenda that was in play in their lives.
So, what does this mean for us? It’s pretty simple really. Jesus is the One who will determine where we will spend eternity and the determining factor will be whether we will place our faith in Him or not. Going back to what He said on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, the people who He turned away were people who had done a lot of religious stuff but were relying on their own merits to gain God’s favor. It didn’t work for them and it won’t work for us either. Yes, Jesus followers are expected to do good deeds but the good deeds are a result of the fact that we have been forgiven, not as a vehicle to gain God’s forgiveness and acceptance. Only by placing our faith in Jesus can we be forgiven. As we look throughout the New Testament, it’s the same message over and over again. How we express our faith in Jesus is most easily done through prayer as we admit to God that we have rebelled against Him and violated His laws and that we are desiring to end that rebellion once and for all. We tell Him that we agree with His assessment of us that we are guilty and deserve to be separated from Him for all eternity. We also tell Him that although we know that we can’t save ourselves that we, through faith, accept Jesus as our Savior and that we are surrendering ourselves to Him. It’s an authority issue at the end of the day. We can either admit that we’re guilty of rebelling against God or we can call God a liar. And, continuing with this train of thought, we can either rebel against God and serve ourselves or we can end our rebellion against God and serve Him. The only thing that we can’t do is serve ourselves and serve God and ourselves. Like driving a car, there’s only room for one person in the driver’s seat and God is patiently waiting for us to decide who will sit in it.
So, the choice is ours. Will we choose to follow Jesus or not. The invitation is open to us regardless of who we are, where we’re from or what we’ve done. In order to take Him up on it however, we have to be willing to repent and follow though. Jesus was quite clear on this point. Next week I'm going to wrap up Peter's part of the story as recorded in Acts. In the meantime, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. See you next week.
Part 20: Acts 12: Peter’s Jailbreak Exit From the Book of Acts
Another thing that stands out about Luke’s account of the early church that he recorded in Acts is that, in terms of who the major players are, it’s actually split in half. In the first half, the major player is Peter and in the second half, it’s all about the Apostle Paul. What I want to do today is to look at what could arguably be called Peter’s exit from the Book of Acts.
As Luke recorded it, the persecution against the church was continuing as it always had only this time it came from Herod who was the Roman appointed governor of the region. Herod arrested some of the church intending to persecute them and included in this number was the Apostle James, (not the man who wrote the book in the New Testament but rather, the brother of the Apostle John) and had him beheaded. Now, when he saw how much this pleased the Jewish leaders of the Sanhedrin, for political reasons probably, he proceeded to arrest Peter, most likely with the intent to do the same thing to him. And the church responded by doing what they had always done. They prayed earnestly for his release.
Now, the night before he was to be brought before Herod to trial, with the members of the church praying round the clock for God to intervene and do something about this, God responded to the prayers of His people. Peter was sleeping soundly, chained in a cell with two armed guards guarding the door, when suddenly a light showed around him in his cell, and an angel appeared and struck him on his side. The chains fell from him, and he was instructed to get up, get dressed, grab his cloak, and follow the angel out the door. As they were leaving the compound, doors and gates leading out of the place were opening by themselves and closing behind them, and, in spite of any noise this might have caused, the guards remained asleep. It was a surreal experience for Peter and, as he would tell it later, at the time he thought that he was having a vision. However, once the angel accompanied him about a block from the prison, the angel left him, and Peter came to his senses. This was not a vision, this was real. He really was on the street; he had escaped from prison, and he was free for the moment.
Knowing that he needed to get off of the street in a timely manner, he quickly went to the nearest house where he knew that the church would be gathered and knocked on the gate. Inside, the members of the church were earnestly praying but, after several minutes of persistent knocking, he finally got the attention of one of the servant girls. Overjoyed, she ran back to the congregation and announced that Peter was at the gate. No, she didn’t let him in, more than likely because she was so excited that he was there, she just left him on the street, but she did go in and tell the others.
And, when she told them who was at the door, they didn’t believe her. “You’re out of your mind,” were their exact words but the servant girl kept persisting that Peter was at the gate. Now, because she was so adamant and so persistently stuck to her story, they concluded that it must be Peter’s angel. I guess you could argue that they compromised. Fortunately, in the middle of all of this, the servant girl was not the only one who was persistent. Peter kept knocking and finally, someone else besides the servant girl heard him and let him in.
Once inside, the church members were astonished, causing quite a commotion and Peter motioned for silence. After giving them a brief explanation of what happened, he instructed them to let James, the brother of Jesus, know what had happened and he left for another place.
Meanwhile, the next morning at the prison, Peter’s escape caused quite a disturbance. The doors and gates were still locked but Peter’s cell was empty and he was just gone and no one had an explanation for any of this. After Herod did a thorough search for Peter, he cross-examined the guards and had them executed, the standard penalty in the Roman army if you were a guard and a prisoner escaped on your watch.
Looking at this story, there’s a couple of things that stand out to me. First off, I think that it offers a plausible explanation for why gospel writers in the other books of the New Testament were so careful to guard Peter’s role in the events surrounding Jesus’ betrayal and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane when they wrote that one of the disciples took a sword and cut off the ear of one of the men coming to arrest Jesus. It’s only in John’s gospel which was written after Peter’s death that it’s revealed that the disciple who did that was Peter. In addition, after this event, Peter is never mentioned again in the Book of Acts. From this point on, the rest of the book is about Paul. Simply put, for the rest of his life, Peter was a fugitive. Think of it like this. For those of you who live in Washington, when Peter escaped from Herod’s prison, it was kind of like an inmate today escaping from Monroe State Penitentiary. When anyone escapes from that place, the authorities don’t just blow it off, they will keep looking for the escapee for years until they find them. It was the same thing here in Peter’s case. The Roman authorities would be looking for him until they recaptured him. Now, just because Peter was on the run, that doesn’t mean that he just hid himself and did nothing. No, Peter was still ministering. He wrote two general epistles before he died and Paul mentioned him several times in his letters, holding him in high regard. Even as a fugitive, Peter still ministered and followed his calling, he just did it underground.
The second thing that stands out to me is the church’s reaction in the middle of all this. On the one hand, they were praying earnestly for a miracle but on the other hand, they were genuinely astonished when God delivered one. Now, lest we judge these early Jesus followers too harshly, we should probably look at things from their perspective. Think back to how the chapter began. It began with the account of James being beheaded and although Luke didn’t write about what they were doing when James was arrested, logic would dictate that they were praying as earnestly for James’ release as they were for Peter’s release. But what happened in James’ case? He was executed. God didn’t deliver him from Herod’s hand but walked with him through it. So, in all fairness to the people who were praying, they had to be ready for both outcomes in Peter’s case so their reaction to this miracle was understandable.
So, what does this mean for us today as we pray. First, we must remember that God is sovereign and in control of all things and while we are instructed to pray and bring our concerns before God, we must make no mistake about any of this. God is not a genie in a lamp who is obligated to do whatever we ask of Him but rather, He is the sovereign Lord who is working out a plan for our good and His glory. To quote Dr. Tony Evans, “God has seen things that you and I haven’t seen and He’s heard conversations that you and I have not heard.” Keeping that thought in mind, sometimes when we pray, God, it seems to me, just lets things play out and cleans up the mess afterwards. But don’t forget this either. He’s also good and He’s quite capable of producing a miracle, and, going back to the fact that He is both all-powerful and sovereign, He is not bound by the laws of nature. He can do things that defy those laws and He often does.
As we pray, we need to remember the Lord’s Prayer that starts like this. “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Did you pick up on that? “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth (our turf) as it is in heaven (your turf). In other words, as we pray, we need to remember that it’s God’s agenda that is the operating agenda in our lives and that we are here to promote that agenda over our own. Does that mean that sometimes in His wisdom that God will say no to us? It sure does but when it happens like that, we would do well to remember God’s character and who we are praying to and trust Him that He knows what He’s doing.
This wraps up this series on Acts. I will revisit the second half of Acts in about six months but, in the meantime, I will be doing a series exploring who Jesus is using His own words. Next week however, I will be sharing a piece that I didn’t write that explains the message of Jesus in farmers terms. When I heard it, it made a lot of sense to me and it was a blessing to me. I hope that it will be to you as well. As always, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. See you next week.
As Luke recorded it, the persecution against the church was continuing as it always had only this time it came from Herod who was the Roman appointed governor of the region. Herod arrested some of the church intending to persecute them and included in this number was the Apostle James, (not the man who wrote the book in the New Testament but rather, the brother of the Apostle John) and had him beheaded. Now, when he saw how much this pleased the Jewish leaders of the Sanhedrin, for political reasons probably, he proceeded to arrest Peter, most likely with the intent to do the same thing to him. And the church responded by doing what they had always done. They prayed earnestly for his release.
Now, the night before he was to be brought before Herod to trial, with the members of the church praying round the clock for God to intervene and do something about this, God responded to the prayers of His people. Peter was sleeping soundly, chained in a cell with two armed guards guarding the door, when suddenly a light showed around him in his cell, and an angel appeared and struck him on his side. The chains fell from him, and he was instructed to get up, get dressed, grab his cloak, and follow the angel out the door. As they were leaving the compound, doors and gates leading out of the place were opening by themselves and closing behind them, and, in spite of any noise this might have caused, the guards remained asleep. It was a surreal experience for Peter and, as he would tell it later, at the time he thought that he was having a vision. However, once the angel accompanied him about a block from the prison, the angel left him, and Peter came to his senses. This was not a vision, this was real. He really was on the street; he had escaped from prison, and he was free for the moment.
Knowing that he needed to get off of the street in a timely manner, he quickly went to the nearest house where he knew that the church would be gathered and knocked on the gate. Inside, the members of the church were earnestly praying but, after several minutes of persistent knocking, he finally got the attention of one of the servant girls. Overjoyed, she ran back to the congregation and announced that Peter was at the gate. No, she didn’t let him in, more than likely because she was so excited that he was there, she just left him on the street, but she did go in and tell the others.
And, when she told them who was at the door, they didn’t believe her. “You’re out of your mind,” were their exact words but the servant girl kept persisting that Peter was at the gate. Now, because she was so adamant and so persistently stuck to her story, they concluded that it must be Peter’s angel. I guess you could argue that they compromised. Fortunately, in the middle of all of this, the servant girl was not the only one who was persistent. Peter kept knocking and finally, someone else besides the servant girl heard him and let him in.
Once inside, the church members were astonished, causing quite a commotion and Peter motioned for silence. After giving them a brief explanation of what happened, he instructed them to let James, the brother of Jesus, know what had happened and he left for another place.
Meanwhile, the next morning at the prison, Peter’s escape caused quite a disturbance. The doors and gates were still locked but Peter’s cell was empty and he was just gone and no one had an explanation for any of this. After Herod did a thorough search for Peter, he cross-examined the guards and had them executed, the standard penalty in the Roman army if you were a guard and a prisoner escaped on your watch.
Looking at this story, there’s a couple of things that stand out to me. First off, I think that it offers a plausible explanation for why gospel writers in the other books of the New Testament were so careful to guard Peter’s role in the events surrounding Jesus’ betrayal and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane when they wrote that one of the disciples took a sword and cut off the ear of one of the men coming to arrest Jesus. It’s only in John’s gospel which was written after Peter’s death that it’s revealed that the disciple who did that was Peter. In addition, after this event, Peter is never mentioned again in the Book of Acts. From this point on, the rest of the book is about Paul. Simply put, for the rest of his life, Peter was a fugitive. Think of it like this. For those of you who live in Washington, when Peter escaped from Herod’s prison, it was kind of like an inmate today escaping from Monroe State Penitentiary. When anyone escapes from that place, the authorities don’t just blow it off, they will keep looking for the escapee for years until they find them. It was the same thing here in Peter’s case. The Roman authorities would be looking for him until they recaptured him. Now, just because Peter was on the run, that doesn’t mean that he just hid himself and did nothing. No, Peter was still ministering. He wrote two general epistles before he died and Paul mentioned him several times in his letters, holding him in high regard. Even as a fugitive, Peter still ministered and followed his calling, he just did it underground.
The second thing that stands out to me is the church’s reaction in the middle of all this. On the one hand, they were praying earnestly for a miracle but on the other hand, they were genuinely astonished when God delivered one. Now, lest we judge these early Jesus followers too harshly, we should probably look at things from their perspective. Think back to how the chapter began. It began with the account of James being beheaded and although Luke didn’t write about what they were doing when James was arrested, logic would dictate that they were praying as earnestly for James’ release as they were for Peter’s release. But what happened in James’ case? He was executed. God didn’t deliver him from Herod’s hand but walked with him through it. So, in all fairness to the people who were praying, they had to be ready for both outcomes in Peter’s case so their reaction to this miracle was understandable.
So, what does this mean for us today as we pray. First, we must remember that God is sovereign and in control of all things and while we are instructed to pray and bring our concerns before God, we must make no mistake about any of this. God is not a genie in a lamp who is obligated to do whatever we ask of Him but rather, He is the sovereign Lord who is working out a plan for our good and His glory. To quote Dr. Tony Evans, “God has seen things that you and I haven’t seen and He’s heard conversations that you and I have not heard.” Keeping that thought in mind, sometimes when we pray, God, it seems to me, just lets things play out and cleans up the mess afterwards. But don’t forget this either. He’s also good and He’s quite capable of producing a miracle, and, going back to the fact that He is both all-powerful and sovereign, He is not bound by the laws of nature. He can do things that defy those laws and He often does.
As we pray, we need to remember the Lord’s Prayer that starts like this. “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Did you pick up on that? “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth (our turf) as it is in heaven (your turf). In other words, as we pray, we need to remember that it’s God’s agenda that is the operating agenda in our lives and that we are here to promote that agenda over our own. Does that mean that sometimes in His wisdom that God will say no to us? It sure does but when it happens like that, we would do well to remember God’s character and who we are praying to and trust Him that He knows what He’s doing.
This wraps up this series on Acts. I will revisit the second half of Acts in about six months but, in the meantime, I will be doing a series exploring who Jesus is using His own words. Next week however, I will be sharing a piece that I didn’t write that explains the message of Jesus in farmers terms. When I heard it, it made a lot of sense to me and it was a blessing to me. I hope that it will be to you as well. As always, if you want to talk more about this week’s article, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to talk to you. See you next week.