03/10/10

Acts 10-12

In Acts 10, a centurion at Caesarea named Cornelius had a vision, which told him to send men to Joppa and bring back a man named Simon and called Peter. He sent two of his servants and a devout soldier to do so. At the time when they were approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. As he did so, he became hungry, and while the meal was being prepared "he fell into a trance." In a vision, he saw "something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners," containing all manner of animals, and a voice told him to "kill and eat." Peter replied, "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean," but the voice told him that he should not "call anything impure that God has made clean." This happened three times "and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven." The men sent by Cornelius arrived while Peter was contemplating this vision, and the spirit told him that they were there, and that he should go with them. The next day, he went with them to Caeserea, and when he entered the house, Cornelious fell at his feet. Peter told him to rise, "I am only a man myself." He then asked why he was sent for, and Cornelius told him about his vision. Peter preached the gospel to them and many received the Holy Spirit, even the gentiles, which surprised the Jews. Peter ordered them all baptized and they asked him to stay for a few days.

Peter was challenged, in Acts 11, by other "circumcised believers" for having gone into the house of Gentiles and eating with them. He explained the vision that he had seen, and reminded them of what Jesus had said - "John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." And he told them that he realized, "if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?" To this, "they had no further objections."

Those disciples who had left Jerusalem, "scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen," traveled to places as widespread as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, preaching to Jews only. Some of the men from Cyprus and Cyrene, however, when to Antioch "and began to speak to Greeks also," and many believed and "turned to the LORD." When the church in Jerusalem heard this, they sent Barnabas, who "saw the evidence of the grace of God" and encouraged them, before going to Tarsus looking for Saul. He found him and took him to Antioch, and they taught there for a year. "The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." And a prophet named Agabus who went from Jerusalem to Antioch predicted a famine (which "happened during the reign of Claudius") and the disciples provided help for those in Judea, "sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul."

Chapter 12 tells about the persecution under King Herod in which James, the brother of John, was killed and Peter was seized. He put him in prison, guarded by four squads of soldiers, intending to try him publically after the Passover. The night before he was to be tried, an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He woke Peter and struck his chains off, and led him out of the prison. He went to the house of "Mary the mother of John, also called Mark" and knocked. They were astonished to see him, and described to them how the Lord had brought him out of prison. The next morning, Herod had his guards executed for having let him escape. "Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there a while," where the people of Tyre and Sidon, who had been quarreling with him, sought an audience. He sat on his throne, in his royal robes, and delivered a public address, and the people shouted "this is the voice of a god, not of a man." When Herod "did not give praise to God" he "was eaten by worms and died."

"When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem," taking John Mark with them.

Thoughts, questions, issues

• Peter was present when Jesus said, "What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.'" (Mt 15:11) He heard the resurrected Christ give him, and the rest of the apostles, the great commission - "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." (Mt 28:19-20) Yet he is still faithfully following the dietary laws, and the laws of ritualistic cleanliness. It takes a vision from the Lord in order to move him out of Jewish circles and in to contact with Gentiles.
• On a similar note, it occurs to me that Saul, as much as he was the key evangelist out into the world in the first generation, helped spread the Gospel even more than we normally give him credit for. The overt evangelism we all know. A significant portion of the New Testament is Paul-centric, consisting of either the stories of his deeds in Acts, or the records of his words in the epistles. But even before he began actively proseletyzing, his actions had the effect of spreading the Gospel.
  
  In Acts 11:19, we are told that "those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch." Saul, of course, was a key and zealous part of the persecution. "All except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria" as "Saul began to destroy the church." (Acts 8:1-3)
  
  It was this persecution that moved the Gospel for the first time beyond Jerusalem. And moved the Gospel beyond the Jewish community.
  
  The resurrected Jesus gave his apostles the great commission. They were to "go and make disciples of all nations." Yet they were unable to see beyond the borders of their own world. Certainly Jerusalem was a mission field, and certainly many there were ready for the Gospel. But not everyone ready was in Jerusalem, and the disciples were so caught in their own habits, living in the streets and houses and temple courts that they new, that they never took the Gospel "on the road." They knew the mission, but were unable to see themselves carrying it out into the world. It took a persecution to push them out of their comfort zone. They took the Gospel with them wherever they went, but until the pressure was put on them to move, they never went anywhere.
  
  So Saul was fighting the church and spreading it at the same time. He was fighting God's word but simultaneously doing God's work.
• And that, in essence, is the whole story of the book of Acts. How the small, desperate group of disciples were transformed by the resurrection appearances and the Holy Spirit into a movement that moved out of historical geography into the whole world (as it was then known), growing by leaps and bounds until the followers were numbered in the tens or hundreds of thousands, and preaching at the center of the greatest empire on the earth.

Psalms 33

A psalm of praise, a song of singing and joy. A psalm of wonderment at the strength and goodness of GOd.

Psalm 33

1 Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.

2 Praise the LORD with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.

3 Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy.

4 For the word of the LORD is right and true;
he is faithful in all he does.

5 The LORD loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.

6 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

7 He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;
he puts the deep into storehouses.

8 Let all the earth fear the LORD;
let all the people of the world revere him.

9 For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.

10 The LORD foils the plans of the nations;
he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.

11 But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever,
the purposes of his heart through all generations.

12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people he chose for his inheritance.

13 From heaven the LORD looks down
and sees all mankind;

14 from his dwelling place he watches
all who live on earth-

15 he who forms the hearts of all,
who considers everything they do.

16 No king is saved by the size of his army;
no warrior escapes by his great strength.

17 A horse is a vain hope for deliverance;
despite all its great strength it cannot save.

18 But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him,
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,

19 to deliver them from death
and keep them alive in famine.

20 We wait in hope for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.

21 In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.

22 May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD,
even as we put our hope in you.

03/09/10

Acts 7-9

Acts 7 details Stephen's speech in front of the Sanhedrin. Challenged on charges of blasphemy, Stephen responds by preaching to them the history of the Jewish people, how GOD made the covenant with Abraham, how the patriarchs sold Joseph into slavery, how he later saved them during the famine, how Moses was born and grew and spoke to the LORD, how they were brought out of Egypt and how they had the tabernacle of the Testimony in the desert, how they brought it with them during the conquest, and kept it through the time of David until Solomon built the temple. Stephen then spoke to the Sanhedrin as a prophet, calling them a "stiff-necked people" and saying, "you always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute?" They were angered, but Stephen, "full of the Holy Spirit," look up and told them that he could see heaven "and the son of Man standing at the right hand of GOD." They dragged him out of the city and stoned him. He prayed while this was happening, then cried out "Lord, do not hold this sin against them," then died. One of the witnesses was a young man named Saul.

Following the stoning of Stephen, in chapter eight a persecution broke out against the church, and Saul was one of the leaders, going house to house and dragging the church leaders to prison. Many of the leaders scattered out of Jerusalem, preaching wherever they went. Philip proclaimed Christ in Samaria and healed many. A man named Simon who had practiced sorcery there believed and was baptized, and followed Philip everywhere. When the news reached Jerusalem of the spread of the Gospel, Peter and John came to Samaria. The prayed that the Holy Spirit would come on the new believers, because they had so far "simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." But Peter and John laid on hands and "they received the Holy Spirit." Simon the sorceror offered Peter and John money for the Holy Spirit, but Peter rebuked him "because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money...your heart is not right before God." After they had preached and testified in Samaria, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem. Philip, at the behest of an angel of the Lord, traveled south and met an important Ethiopian official in his chariot, reading the book of Isaiah. He did not understand it, and asked Philip to sit with him and explain. So Philip preached the Gospel, and, when they passes some water, the Ethiopian asked to be baptized, and Philip baptized him. "When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again...Philip...appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea."

Acts nine tells of Saul's conversion. Saul continued to "breath out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples," persecuting the church wherever he found it. He asked the high priest for letters to the synagogue in Damascus that he might take any believers prisoner back to Jerusalem. On the road to Damascus, a "light from heaven flashed around him" and he heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” When he asked who it was, the voice said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." He continued into the city and for three days, blind, he ate and drank nothing. The voice of the LORD called to a disciple in Damascus named Ananias and told him to go lay hands on Saul and restore his sight. Ananias was resistant because of all the harm that Saul had done, but the LORD said "this man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel." Ananias went, and laid on his hands, and "something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again." He got up and was baptized.

Saul stayed for a time in Damascus, and preached in the synagogue that Jesus is the Son of God. The people wondered at his transformation but he "grew more and more powerful" and, many days later, inspired the Jews to kill him. But he learned of their plans and escaped by being lowered in a basket through an opening in the wall by his followers. In Jerusalem, the disciples feared that Saul's conversion was only a ploy to find them, but Barnabas took him to them. He stayed with them and moved about in Jerusalem, "speaking boldly in the name of the Lord." He debated with the Grecian Jews, "but they tried to kill him," so the apostles sent him off to Tarsus.

Peter visited the Christians in Lydda, and healed a paralytic named Aeneas. There was also a disciple named Tabitha (Dorcas in Greek) that became sick and died. The disciples heard that Peter was there and called him, and when he came, he was taken upstairs to the room where the body was. He sent everyone out of the room, then got down on his knees and prayed, then told her to get up. He then called the believers "and presented her to them alive."

Thoughts, questions, issues

• Stephen's summary of the Pentateuch is excellent.
• In Bruce Metzger's textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, he addressed the issue of Christ's statement (Lk 23:34) from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." It is actually not in the earliest manuscripts. The editors of the Greek New Testament left it in because
  

  the logion, though probably not part of the original Gospel of Luke, bears self-evident tokens of its dominical origin, and was retained...in its traditional place where it had been incorporated by unknown copyists early in the transmission of the Third Gospel.

  "Domionical origins" simply means that it originated with Christ. One of the "self-evident tokens of its dominical origin" is that it's a hard saying. It's easy to imagine a copyist taking it out - it's harder to imagine why one would stick it in if it were not authentic. But another reason is that Stephen said it during his martyrdom in Acts 7. This would have been an exceptionally presumptuous had Christ not said exactly the same thing from the cross.
• I said yesterday that there was a danger in the apostolic healing stories to cause people to think of God as a resource to be used or manipulated as opposed to a creator to be worshipped. I was not thinking of Simon the Sorceror when I wrote that, but he exhibits exactly the kind of attitude that I was talking about.
• I suspect that the story of Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus is the single best known story from the book of Acts, and that the single best-known line is, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

Psalms 32

The first half of this one contains very psalmist rhetoric. "Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven...blessed is the man...in whose spirit is no deceit." The second half reads, in places, like a section of proverbs. "Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you."

Psalm 32
Of David. A maskil.
1 Blessed is he
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.

2 Blessed is the man
whose sin the LORD does not count against him
and in whose spirit is no deceit.

3 When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.

4 For day and night
your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.
Selah

5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, "I will confess
my transgressions to the LORD "—
and you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
Selah

6 Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you
while you may be found;
surely when the mighty waters rise,
they will not reach him.

7 You are my hiding place;
you will protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance.
Selah

8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you and watch over you.

9 Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
or they will not come to you.

10 Many are the woes of the wicked,
but the LORD's unfailing love
surrounds the man who trusts in him.

11 Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous;
sing, all you who are upright in heart!