Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. 20 At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. 21 All those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?” 22 Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Messiah.
23 After many days had gone by, there was a conspiracy among the Jews to kill him, 24 but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. 25 But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall.
26 When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. 28 So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. 29 He talked and debated with the Hellenistic Jews,[a] but they tried to kill him. 30 When the believers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.
31 Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.
Dig Deeper
There are still Christians in the world today that live in constant fear of real, physical persecution and even death for their faith. But most Christians, especially those in the United States, know virtually nothing about that life and we rarely, if ever, encounter true persecution. The early church, however, faced it all the time and they had to be on their toes and constantly aware of those who sought to destroy them. Saul was the chief among those persecutors in the early days of the church but then rumors began to spread around that not only had this chief thorn in the side of the church ceased his damaging activities but he had actually become one of them. Obvious questions had to be raised among them concerning whether or not he could be trusted. Would it be out of the realm of possibility to believe that Saul might fake a conversion and even follow through on this charade for months and even years in order to work his way into the presence and trust of the leaders of the movement, the apostles? Once he had gained their confidence the whole movement could be brought to its knees in one fell swoop.
It’s easy to see why the church might feel this way and react with such hesitancy but there is even more to their response than that. Yes, there was an initial distrust of Saul but enter into this story for a moment and imagine yourself in a similar position. Imagine that someone came out publicly as an opponent of your current church family and began to gain the power and support needed to destroy your church. Imagine that they began to speak publicly of wiping out your church and hunting down every single member and making an example of them so that other Christians in other cities would think twice about remaining loyal to this movement of Messiah people. Now imagine how you would feel as this persecutor of your church led an effort to have a beloved and important leader in your church dragged out into the street and killed with everyone there to watch. Can you even begin to fathom how difficult that would be. What would you be feeling? How difficult would Jesus’ words to love your enemies seem under those circumstances? How hard would that be for your church to deal with? What would you tell your dear brother’s widow and children? How challenging would it be to continue to preach about hope in the resurrection and an unfailing commitment to love those who persecute you? That would take real conviction wouldn’t it?
Can you truly imagine all of that and enter into this story? Now really challenge yourself. How would you feel about that man that had persecuted your church, killed your friend, and promised to finish the job with the rest of the believers soon? How would you feel if he suddenly popped up and said that he had come to believe in your Messiah and that he not only wanted forgiveness but wanted to become one of you. Certainly you would be filled with mistrust and caution but overcoming that would be the easy part. Can you imagine loving this man as a brother and allowing him to move among you as one of you? Can you imagine the other friends and family and even the wife of your slain brother in Christ doing the same? That kind of Christianity is not for the weak of stomach. That is big-boy Christianity. Yet, it is exactly what we see in the early church. What Luke is describing is something more than your run-of-the-mill religion. This was what happened when a community of people took seriously Jesus’ call to live by love (cf. Jn. 13:34-35).
After his incredible conversion and baptism into Christ, Saul spent several days with the disciples but he wasn’t just enjoying the fellowship with those that were his enemies just a few days previous. He began to immediately preach that Jesus was the Son of God after all. This teaching was not unique to Saul but he certainly seemed to have stressed it more than anyone else. The term “the Son of God” held deep significance for someone like Saul because it was a term that had come to be connected specifically with God’s promised Messiah based on such Old Testament passages as Psalm 2. The term also became an important concept for the early Christians because they saw it as important to establish Jesus’ status as God’s true son. This identity, they believed, was established by God (Matt 3:17; 17:5) and showed that Jesus was the true inheritor of God’s family rather than Israel who had first been called God’s son (Ex. 4:22). Eventually the term came to be used almost as a shorthand way of describing the strange truth that Jesus was somehow an extension of God himself and was a marker of his identity. In those early days of Saul’s preaching, however, it is most certain that Saul’s primary contention was the Jesus really was the Messiah. His death on the cross was not a mark of his shame but a necessary step as God’s faithful and suffering servant who was resurrected by God, thus declaring his sonship (see Romans 1:1-4 as Paul would develop that thought years later).
Saul’s sudden and dramatic switch was confusing to those in Damascus, to say the least. It would be even more shocking than if Osama Bin Laden suddenly appeared on the Fox Television Network to espouse the great qualities of the United States and to identify himself as an American Patriot who was now seeking citizenship in the land of the free and the home of the brave. People simply did not know what to do with all of this or what to make of it.
It appears that during the “many days” that Luke quickly refers to includes a time period of nearly three years that he spent in Arabia (Gal. 1:17). During that time in Arabia he continued to preach the gospel and apparently made an enemy of the Arabian King Aretas who, on Saul’s return to Damascus, worked with the governor in Damascus to try to get rid of Saul (2 Cor. 11:32-33). Saul’s friends helped him escape Damascus by lowering him over the wall, an act that Saul would use to demonstrate his weakness and humility by human standards in 2 Corinthians 11:32-33. But these friends were even more than just that as Luke already calls them his followers. In just a few short years, Saul went from going to Damascus to kill Christians to having them see him as something of a leader and worth following. The transformation of the gospel in Saul’s life was incredible.
By the time Saul arrived in Jerusalem we might think that he was greeted with open arms but that was not the case. These were people that were committed to living as Jesus’ family but they were still human beings with human fears and hurts. Saul had caused them great damage and had killed their dear brother Stephen. Now here he was just a few years later wanting to be accepted by the believers as one of them. Surely Saul had to understand the situation and his writings never display anything other than great humility and and an overwhelming feeling of grace that he had been accepted into God’s family, but that had to be in doubt, at least for a moment as he arrived in Jerusalem.
Saul needed someone to believe in him and in the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in his life. He found just such a man in Barnabas, a man who had already demonstrated his unyielding commitment to God’s family (Acts 4:36). Saul, verified Barnabas, really had become one of them. This was no mere ploy. He had boldly preached the word of God in Damascus and had come into contention with the Hellenistic Jews, the very group of which Saul had likely been a part and had worked with to kill Stephen.
In the context of all of that, then, verse 28 is rather remarkable. Saul was accepted into the Christian community and he moved freely among them. It is difficult to overstate the amount of love, forgiveness, and belief that this new way of living and viewing the world was really God’s will that this would have taken to bring Saul into the family as one of their own. From a worldly point of view this was crazy. But they were becoming the community of love that Jesus said they would (Jn. 13:34-35) and were truly loving their enemies (Matt. 5:44). Although Saul was only in Jerusalem for about two weeks and met only Peter and James among the apostles (Gal. 1:18-20), his welcome into the community in Jerusalem is still remarkable.
As Saul continued his preaching activities in Jerusalem, mostly with those that he was apparently the most intimately familiar, the Hellenistic Jews, they became contentious to the point that they wanted to kill Saul. He truly was beginning to find out how much he would suffer for this life of Christ, but this was only the beginning. The other believers, however, realized that Saul needed to go elsewhere so they sent him to Caesarea and eventually home to Tarsus. It is likely that this decision was a combination of the realization that Saul’s presence was bringing unnecessary pressure down on the Christian community and that he could be of more use fulfilling his God-given role as apostle to the Gentiles by leaving Jerusalem.
We will not see Saul again until several years later, still in Tarsus (Acts 11:25), but the stage has been set for the next important step in the spreading of the gospel. God’s promise was always that his family would consist of all nations and that had to include the mission to the Gentiles. God had laid the framework and called the people that he wanted to carry that message forward. In the meantime, the existing bands of Jewish and Samaritan believers received a bit of a respite from persecution and these traditional rivals could already think of themselves as “the” church. They were one already and soon, as a result of the work of Saul and others, the Gentiles would join them in the family of the Messiah.
Devotional Thought
Saul’s conversion from persecutor of the church to proponent of Jesus as the Christ is nothing short of amazing. Surely it would have seemed to the early Christians that Saul was beyond conversion. It would have seemed impossible. But what is impossible with man is quite possible with God. But take a moment to think of this. Who is the Saul in your life? Who seems beyond conversion in your mind? Make a commitment to spend time everyday praying for them. If God can turn Saul around, why not the person you’re thinking of?
Monday, January 31, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Acts 9:10-19
10 In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”
“Yes, Lord,” he answered.
11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”
13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”
15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
Dig Deeper
I don’t watch too many television shows on a regular basis anymore but one show that I have caught a few times and kind of enjoy is a show called “White Collar.” The premise of the show centers around an FBI agent and one of the best counterfeiters and high end theft artists in the world. The FBI agent, who is very skilled in his own right, managed to be the first person to hunt down and actually capture the thief. Once he was in custody he was given a choice. He could stay in jail for a very long time or he could come to work for the FBI as a consultant and help them catch other difficult-to-apprehend criminals. The thief decided that he would take the deal and work with the FBI, which is where the show picks up. Each week the two men that were once foes now have to figure out how to work together for a common goal. One thing that constantly serves as a point of friction and moves the plot of the show along is that it is very difficult for these two men to fully trust one another. And it goes beyond just those two. Whenever one of them has to go into the “world” of the other man, everyone around them is very distrustful. That is especially true of the thief who is constantly questioned and mistrusted by everyone around him. The show demonstrates the human truth that people can occasionally change their circumstances but it is much more difficult venture to expect others to change their perception of that person despite their change in circumstances. Trust is a tricky thing.
As you read this particular passage try to go back through it carefully and enter the story from Ananias’ point of view. We don’t know much about this Ananias other than what we learn about him from this encounter with Paul, and he quietly slips into the shadows of history after this encounter. But imagine what he must have felt and been thinking as this scene played out. He was a man full of faith who had come to trust in the life of Christ over his own and had been baptized into the family of Christ, pledging himself to live a crucified life that would be the expression of Christ’s life and not his own (cf. Gal. 2:20). Yet and still, this incident must have pushed his faith to limits that he would not have previously known.
Ananias apparently lived in Damascus at the time that Saul was on his way there. He must have been quite bold in his faith to have stayed there with the specter of Saul making his way to the city with the express purpose of rooting out Christians and bringing them to Jerusalem in chains. The Lord came to Ananias in a vision and told him to go the house of Judas on Straight Street. It surely wuold have been quite exhilarating to have been called by God himself to a mission, but the Lord wasn’t done. Once he got to the house he would meet a man named Saul of Tarsus there. His internal response must have been something like “excuse me? You want me to meet who?” This was dangerous stuff; almost crazy. The fact that God informed him that Saul had also received a vision from God and was there waiting for Ananias to come and restore his sight could hardly have been terribly comforting. What must Ananias have been thinking and feeling? What would you be thinking if God came to you in a vision and called you to go to Pakistan and seek out Osama Bin Laden who would be waiting for you to help him convert to Christianity? That sounds crazy and dangerous wouldn’t it? You’re mind would be full of perfectly good reasons why no sane person would ever do such a foolhardy thing.
In fact, Ananias did have a few thoughts for the Lord. He was gently protesting the way so many other biblical figures did when they were called by God to step out in faith in ways that made little sense. Ananias had heard about Saul, as most Christians in Jerusalem, Damascus, and the surrounding areas had. He well knew what Saul had been doing, saying, and most importantly threatening. Perhaps God didn’t understand that Saul was there to arrest them all and possibly worse. If anything, maybe Saul had somehow cooked up a plot where he was faking conversion so that he could get access to the Christian community. That was certainly nefarious but there was just no way in Ananias’ mind that Saul could ever be trusted. Surely God must understand that? We have to give credit where it is due, though, because although Ananias was raising some issues and mildly protesting, he was never disrespectful or disobedient.
But God heard enough of his logical reasoning and ended the conversation with one word; “Go.” God understood exactly who Saul was and what he had been up to. But this was the man he had chosen for a very specific mission. He would be God’s special instrument to go the Gentiles and their kings as well as have a profound influence on the people of Israel. We don’t know why God chose to use Saul in such a powerful way considering that he was not one of Jesus’ apostles and had not spent time with Jesus during his earthly ministry, but perhaps that’s the point. Saul being brought in God’s family in such an important position sent the message that all people were redeemable by God. There would be no special inner circle of important and privileged people in God’s family. Even a persecutor of the church could be used by God to spread the message of the gospel of his Messiah.
The conversion of Saul is an important factor, though, in confirming the truth of the gospel and the reasons for the spread of early Christianity. The early Christians claimed that Jesus had resurrected from the dead and produced over 500 eyewitnesses to back up their claims. But the conversion of Saul gives special evidence. What possible reason could Saul have to convert unless he really had seen the resurrected Christ? The only consistent and logical reason is that he really did see what he claimed to have seen. After all, he wasn’t called to a life of privilege and power. From the very outset God promised that Saul would find out just how much he would suffer for the name and life of Christ (Hebrews used the term “name” to describe the totality of a person in such a way that “name” and “life” were often virtually interchangeable, based on the context). The one who was determined to cause the people of Jesus to suffer would now join them and suffer for Jesus himself.
Saul’s experience during those three days is incredibly instructive for those of us today who live in a time and place where the idea of true salvation relies much more on traditions than on the biblical witness itself. Saul had been confronted with a truth that shook his world to its very foundations. It left him unable to eat and drink for three days, doing nothing but remaining in a state of fasting and prayer. Everything he believed that he had known about God had been shown to him to be wrong in an instant. This was all a result of his interaction with the resurrected Christ.
So is it safe to assume that during those three days Saul’s worldview had shifted radically and he had come to a belief in Jesus as the Messiah and as God’s agent for salvation into his family and reconciliation? It not only seems safe, it seems the only possible reality. Saul had come to believe in Jesus as the Christ, God’s Messiah. This is instructive to those who desire to reduce salvation to nothing more than a mental agreement that Jesus is savior or with the act of praying Jesus into one’s heart (an action that is never mentioned or carried out anywhere in the Bible). Saul had certainly come to a belief in Christ but he had not been filled with the Holy Spirit and his sins had not yet been forgiven (Acts 22:16) because he had not called upon the name of the Lord through the birth of being baptized into the life of Christ.
Luke recorded, in verse 14, that Ananias had referred to Christians as those who called on the name of the Lord. Saul, Luke records the Lord as saying, would suffer for the name. And Saul would be baptized into, what went without having to say, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38). The term name, as mentioned above, could be used to refer to the totality of the person and, depending upon the context, their authority, the complete aspect of their personality, and most often the life. When New Testament writers used the word “name” in the context of Jesus Christ it is almost always in reference to his life. When it was declared that someone should be baptized into the name of Jesus, the reference was to the life and identity of Christ (see Rom. 6:1-14: Gal. 3:26-28; Col. 2:9-3:3). Luke clearly was not intending to portray that Saul had entered into the family of Christ and received the gift of the Spirit (cf. Acts 2:38) through merely understanding that Jesus was the Messiah and that he needed to trust in him for salvation. That was total belief but Saul also needed total conversion and total commitment.
That’s where his baptism into Christ came. It was only when Ananias baptized him into Christ that he truly was totally converted and entered into the family of God where God’s children have their sins forgiven (Acts 22:16). Many modern Christian commentators have spent much time trying to make a distinction between Christian belief and Christian baptism into Christ. But this is a distinction that would have been largely nonsensical to Luke and the other early Christians. In the way that Jews and early Christians thought, your beliefs and actions went hand in hand, with your actions demonstrating your beliefs. You simply could not distinguish one from the other and call the mental action good while calling the accompanying physical action an act of earning one’s salvation. Immersion was to the early church the moment of being born into God’s family.
Paul had experienced total belief by being confronted by the resurrected Christ. He had then experienced total conversion as he was baptized and was subsequently filled with the Holy Spirit. What he would spend the rest of his life experiencing, and what God promised to him here through Ananias was total commitment. Paul would truly discover just how much he would have to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ.
Devotional Thought
True faith requires not just total belief but also total conversion and total commitment. It is great to have a belief in Jesus but what about total conversion by being baptized into his life (dying to self, receiving the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit), and total commitment? How are you doing in those areas?
“Yes, Lord,” he answered.
11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”
13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”
15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
Dig Deeper
I don’t watch too many television shows on a regular basis anymore but one show that I have caught a few times and kind of enjoy is a show called “White Collar.” The premise of the show centers around an FBI agent and one of the best counterfeiters and high end theft artists in the world. The FBI agent, who is very skilled in his own right, managed to be the first person to hunt down and actually capture the thief. Once he was in custody he was given a choice. He could stay in jail for a very long time or he could come to work for the FBI as a consultant and help them catch other difficult-to-apprehend criminals. The thief decided that he would take the deal and work with the FBI, which is where the show picks up. Each week the two men that were once foes now have to figure out how to work together for a common goal. One thing that constantly serves as a point of friction and moves the plot of the show along is that it is very difficult for these two men to fully trust one another. And it goes beyond just those two. Whenever one of them has to go into the “world” of the other man, everyone around them is very distrustful. That is especially true of the thief who is constantly questioned and mistrusted by everyone around him. The show demonstrates the human truth that people can occasionally change their circumstances but it is much more difficult venture to expect others to change their perception of that person despite their change in circumstances. Trust is a tricky thing.
As you read this particular passage try to go back through it carefully and enter the story from Ananias’ point of view. We don’t know much about this Ananias other than what we learn about him from this encounter with Paul, and he quietly slips into the shadows of history after this encounter. But imagine what he must have felt and been thinking as this scene played out. He was a man full of faith who had come to trust in the life of Christ over his own and had been baptized into the family of Christ, pledging himself to live a crucified life that would be the expression of Christ’s life and not his own (cf. Gal. 2:20). Yet and still, this incident must have pushed his faith to limits that he would not have previously known.
Ananias apparently lived in Damascus at the time that Saul was on his way there. He must have been quite bold in his faith to have stayed there with the specter of Saul making his way to the city with the express purpose of rooting out Christians and bringing them to Jerusalem in chains. The Lord came to Ananias in a vision and told him to go the house of Judas on Straight Street. It surely wuold have been quite exhilarating to have been called by God himself to a mission, but the Lord wasn’t done. Once he got to the house he would meet a man named Saul of Tarsus there. His internal response must have been something like “excuse me? You want me to meet who?” This was dangerous stuff; almost crazy. The fact that God informed him that Saul had also received a vision from God and was there waiting for Ananias to come and restore his sight could hardly have been terribly comforting. What must Ananias have been thinking and feeling? What would you be thinking if God came to you in a vision and called you to go to Pakistan and seek out Osama Bin Laden who would be waiting for you to help him convert to Christianity? That sounds crazy and dangerous wouldn’t it? You’re mind would be full of perfectly good reasons why no sane person would ever do such a foolhardy thing.
In fact, Ananias did have a few thoughts for the Lord. He was gently protesting the way so many other biblical figures did when they were called by God to step out in faith in ways that made little sense. Ananias had heard about Saul, as most Christians in Jerusalem, Damascus, and the surrounding areas had. He well knew what Saul had been doing, saying, and most importantly threatening. Perhaps God didn’t understand that Saul was there to arrest them all and possibly worse. If anything, maybe Saul had somehow cooked up a plot where he was faking conversion so that he could get access to the Christian community. That was certainly nefarious but there was just no way in Ananias’ mind that Saul could ever be trusted. Surely God must understand that? We have to give credit where it is due, though, because although Ananias was raising some issues and mildly protesting, he was never disrespectful or disobedient.
But God heard enough of his logical reasoning and ended the conversation with one word; “Go.” God understood exactly who Saul was and what he had been up to. But this was the man he had chosen for a very specific mission. He would be God’s special instrument to go the Gentiles and their kings as well as have a profound influence on the people of Israel. We don’t know why God chose to use Saul in such a powerful way considering that he was not one of Jesus’ apostles and had not spent time with Jesus during his earthly ministry, but perhaps that’s the point. Saul being brought in God’s family in such an important position sent the message that all people were redeemable by God. There would be no special inner circle of important and privileged people in God’s family. Even a persecutor of the church could be used by God to spread the message of the gospel of his Messiah.
The conversion of Saul is an important factor, though, in confirming the truth of the gospel and the reasons for the spread of early Christianity. The early Christians claimed that Jesus had resurrected from the dead and produced over 500 eyewitnesses to back up their claims. But the conversion of Saul gives special evidence. What possible reason could Saul have to convert unless he really had seen the resurrected Christ? The only consistent and logical reason is that he really did see what he claimed to have seen. After all, he wasn’t called to a life of privilege and power. From the very outset God promised that Saul would find out just how much he would suffer for the name and life of Christ (Hebrews used the term “name” to describe the totality of a person in such a way that “name” and “life” were often virtually interchangeable, based on the context). The one who was determined to cause the people of Jesus to suffer would now join them and suffer for Jesus himself.
Saul’s experience during those three days is incredibly instructive for those of us today who live in a time and place where the idea of true salvation relies much more on traditions than on the biblical witness itself. Saul had been confronted with a truth that shook his world to its very foundations. It left him unable to eat and drink for three days, doing nothing but remaining in a state of fasting and prayer. Everything he believed that he had known about God had been shown to him to be wrong in an instant. This was all a result of his interaction with the resurrected Christ.
So is it safe to assume that during those three days Saul’s worldview had shifted radically and he had come to a belief in Jesus as the Messiah and as God’s agent for salvation into his family and reconciliation? It not only seems safe, it seems the only possible reality. Saul had come to believe in Jesus as the Christ, God’s Messiah. This is instructive to those who desire to reduce salvation to nothing more than a mental agreement that Jesus is savior or with the act of praying Jesus into one’s heart (an action that is never mentioned or carried out anywhere in the Bible). Saul had certainly come to a belief in Christ but he had not been filled with the Holy Spirit and his sins had not yet been forgiven (Acts 22:16) because he had not called upon the name of the Lord through the birth of being baptized into the life of Christ.
Luke recorded, in verse 14, that Ananias had referred to Christians as those who called on the name of the Lord. Saul, Luke records the Lord as saying, would suffer for the name. And Saul would be baptized into, what went without having to say, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38). The term name, as mentioned above, could be used to refer to the totality of the person and, depending upon the context, their authority, the complete aspect of their personality, and most often the life. When New Testament writers used the word “name” in the context of Jesus Christ it is almost always in reference to his life. When it was declared that someone should be baptized into the name of Jesus, the reference was to the life and identity of Christ (see Rom. 6:1-14: Gal. 3:26-28; Col. 2:9-3:3). Luke clearly was not intending to portray that Saul had entered into the family of Christ and received the gift of the Spirit (cf. Acts 2:38) through merely understanding that Jesus was the Messiah and that he needed to trust in him for salvation. That was total belief but Saul also needed total conversion and total commitment.
That’s where his baptism into Christ came. It was only when Ananias baptized him into Christ that he truly was totally converted and entered into the family of God where God’s children have their sins forgiven (Acts 22:16). Many modern Christian commentators have spent much time trying to make a distinction between Christian belief and Christian baptism into Christ. But this is a distinction that would have been largely nonsensical to Luke and the other early Christians. In the way that Jews and early Christians thought, your beliefs and actions went hand in hand, with your actions demonstrating your beliefs. You simply could not distinguish one from the other and call the mental action good while calling the accompanying physical action an act of earning one’s salvation. Immersion was to the early church the moment of being born into God’s family.
Paul had experienced total belief by being confronted by the resurrected Christ. He had then experienced total conversion as he was baptized and was subsequently filled with the Holy Spirit. What he would spend the rest of his life experiencing, and what God promised to him here through Ananias was total commitment. Paul would truly discover just how much he would have to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ.
Devotional Thought
True faith requires not just total belief but also total conversion and total commitment. It is great to have a belief in Jesus but what about total conversion by being baptized into his life (dying to self, receiving the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit), and total commitment? How are you doing in those areas?
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Acts 9:1-9
Saul’s Conversion
1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.
Dig Deeper
Have you ever been absolutely sure of something even though other people told you that you were wrong? They might have been convinced of their position but you just knew that you were right and were sticking to your guns. I know I have been there. A few weeks ago I was looking for an important piece of paper that had some very vital notes on it. I needed that piece of paper right then but suddenly I couldn’t find it so I went rummaging through the house looking for it. To add to my earnestness, I absolutely cannot stand it when I can’t find something that I need. That’s an unusual situation for me and I don’t like it when I find myself unable to find what I want. As I was looking, though, my wife came in and asked what I was looking for. When I told her, she mentioned that she thought it was in a stack of papers on the kitchen counter. I had already looked through that stack and so I confidently told her that it wasn’t in there but that I needed to find it quickly. She repeated that she was pretty sure she saw it there a few days previous. I was annoyed now and told her that I knew it wasn’t in there because I had looked and I would appreciate if she would help me look for this paper. She went into our room presumably to look for the paper in there but by this time I had looked everywhere that it could have been and I was nearing despair of finding this paper. I was beginning to formulate a new plan of what I would now have to do without these notes. As I was standing there thinking, I put my hand on the counter and realized that it had fallen on that stack of papers. For some reason, I pulled back about half of the stack and there staring at me light a blinding white light was the paper I had been looking for. I suddenly had a sinking feeling. My wife had been right. I had been wrong. And I had wasted a lot of time looking for something that was exactly where my wife said it had been. I had just known that she was wrong, though, but now came the dizzying truth that I was the one that was wrong. It can be a difficult thing to swallow even with little things like a lost piece of paper.
Saul had spent the balance of his life serving the God of Israel with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He had given his life to a study of the Scriptures and was so committed to serving the almighty God and defending his cause that he was willing to prove his zeal by doing whatever it would take. Oh sure, he had heard these Christians claim that those who rejected Jesus as Messiah were wrong and that God would prove that one day, but Saul could safely ignore those claims. Jesus was a failed Messiah “wanna-be” that was all. All they needed to do was look at his crucifixion. In that moment, Paul had looked at the idea of Jesus being the Messiah and could see clearly that he wasn’t. No Messiah would die at the hands of the pagan Romans on a shameful cross. That was how criminals died. He saw nothing there of note, and was sure that he was doing the right thing by rejecting this blasphemy towards the true God. He would demonstrate his loyalty to God by ridding Israel of this heresy as quickly as was humanly possible.
Although some have argued against Saul’s legal ability to go around killing disciples, it is certain that the early Christian communities would have taken his threats quite seriously. Saul was there giving approval to Stephen’s stoning death and it is quite possible that Saul and Stephen knew each other before Stephen’s conversion to Christianity. If that is how someone he knew was treated what would that mean for the many Christians that didn’t know him. Those threats were serious, and whether they were strictly legal or not, Saul seemed to have enough authority behind him in the form of approval letters from the Sanhedrin, and he certainly had the will and determination to carry out those threats. Stephen was willing to die for what he believed to be the truth and Saul was willing to kill for what he believed to be the truth. It was certainly a stark difference. As F.F. Bruce stated in his book “Paul”, Stephen argued that “the new has come, therefore the old must go.” While Saul reasoned that “the old must stay, therefore the new must go.” Something clearly had to give.
Saul’s zeal is demonstrated in that he wasn’t just willing to deal with issues with Christians as they came up. He wanted to go hunt down disciples and eradicate this movement before it could spread any further than it already had. He was going to round them up and take them to prison in Jerusalem, and seemed to be quite willing to put to death any who caused trouble or refused to recant. As Paul packed up for his trip to Damascus, a town about 150 miles from Jerusalem, he had letters of authority in his bag and the determined warmth in his heart of knowing that he was doing the right thing.
We don’t know and aren’t told what Paul was doing as he made the journey between Jerusalem and Damascus but we can probably guess that he may have been praying and asking for continued guidance from the Lord or perhaps he was meditating on the presence of the Lord. But whatever he was doing, he was suddenly shaken into the moment as a bright light from heaven flashed all around him. The light was so bright and unexpected that it caused Saul to fall to the ground. Paul had presumably never experienced anything like this before but he would have almost assuredly associated this light with the Shekinah glory of God described in the Old Testament. The divine voice coming from the realm of heaven was similar to other instances of God’s voice being heard (Gen. 22:11; 46:2; Ex. 31-6; 1 Sam. 3:4; Isa. 6:8; Lk. 3:22; 9:35).
But this voice had a question for Saul. Why was he persecuting me, asked the divine voice? This must have been a shocking question for Saul. Who was he persecuting? Far be it from Saul to ever do anything that would injure the almighty God. He had made a life of serving him, not persecuting him. He was defending God. He just couldn’t be wrong about that. But then the voice clearly identified himself. It was Jesus. In that moment Saul’s life changed forever.
Saul would later say that at this moment God had revealed his son to him (Gal. 1:16); he had seen Jesus face to face for himself (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8). Jesus was alive. His disciples had been right and Saul had been monumentally wrong. He could no longer deny that as he stood stunned in the divine presence of Jesus. That was the kicker. He hadn’t just seen Jesus, he was seeing him in the realm of heaven. This meant that Jesus had truly ascended to the right hand of the Father, just as Stephen had claimed. He was the Messiah. All of God’s promises had really been answered “yes” in him (2 Cor. 1:20). It was in this moment that Paul began the journey of discovery that would eventually lead to his realization that he had been viewing Jesus from a worldly point of view (2 Cor. 5:16). Saul had looked at the cross as evidence of Jesus’ failure as a claimed Messiah, but he would soon realize that it was his very confirmation. The cross was how all of God’s promises came together in Christ. From this moment on, Saul would no longer view Jesus the Messiah from a worldly point of view.
Perhaps the next most shocking realization beyond the fact that Jesus really had resurrected from the dead and was the Messiah ruling from the heavenly realm, was that these people that Paul had been so full of zeal to hunt down were the King’s people. To strike them was to strike the ascended Jesus. Saul would learn the lesson well that whatever was true of the Messiah was true of his people. When Saul persecuted them, it was really Christ he was persecuting because they were an extension of him. Not only that, but Saul would later go on to realize that all that Christ had in his identity as the Son of God and the true Messiah also belonged to those in Christ (see Rom. 6:1-14).
Not only did Jesus identify himself and place himself as the true target of Saul’s persecutions, he also ordered that Saul go into the city of Damascus and await further instructions. We are told that his companions heard a sound but that Christ did not reveal himself to them, they could only see the bright light and hear a noise but could not distinguish a voice (Acts 22:9; cf. Jn. 12:29 for a similar phenomenon). Saul’s friends led him into the city. Once there, Saul was so stunned by his encounter with the resurrected Jesus that he spent the next three days still blinded (perhaps as God’s way of showing Saul that he had been blind spiritually all along) unable to eat or drink. He apparently did nothing more than pray and fast. Saul had always had total belief in the God of Israel and now he had come to total belief in Jesus Christ as his saving agent but he was about to learn that not only does faith require that we believe in God but also that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (cf. Heb. 11:6). Saul had come to a point of total belief but he would soon find out about total conversion and total commitment. He would soon find out what it would really require of him to serve the living God.
Devotional Thought
Many people already feel like they have had their “Damascus road” experience in coming to the realization of the truth about God and Jesus but feel very uncomfortable with the thought that God might want to use them as his “bright light” in the life of someone else. Ask God to use you as his “light” to shine into the life of someone and be prepared to be bold as you lovingly show them that everything they thought they knew was perhaps not quite accurate.
1 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.
Dig Deeper
Have you ever been absolutely sure of something even though other people told you that you were wrong? They might have been convinced of their position but you just knew that you were right and were sticking to your guns. I know I have been there. A few weeks ago I was looking for an important piece of paper that had some very vital notes on it. I needed that piece of paper right then but suddenly I couldn’t find it so I went rummaging through the house looking for it. To add to my earnestness, I absolutely cannot stand it when I can’t find something that I need. That’s an unusual situation for me and I don’t like it when I find myself unable to find what I want. As I was looking, though, my wife came in and asked what I was looking for. When I told her, she mentioned that she thought it was in a stack of papers on the kitchen counter. I had already looked through that stack and so I confidently told her that it wasn’t in there but that I needed to find it quickly. She repeated that she was pretty sure she saw it there a few days previous. I was annoyed now and told her that I knew it wasn’t in there because I had looked and I would appreciate if she would help me look for this paper. She went into our room presumably to look for the paper in there but by this time I had looked everywhere that it could have been and I was nearing despair of finding this paper. I was beginning to formulate a new plan of what I would now have to do without these notes. As I was standing there thinking, I put my hand on the counter and realized that it had fallen on that stack of papers. For some reason, I pulled back about half of the stack and there staring at me light a blinding white light was the paper I had been looking for. I suddenly had a sinking feeling. My wife had been right. I had been wrong. And I had wasted a lot of time looking for something that was exactly where my wife said it had been. I had just known that she was wrong, though, but now came the dizzying truth that I was the one that was wrong. It can be a difficult thing to swallow even with little things like a lost piece of paper.
Saul had spent the balance of his life serving the God of Israel with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He had given his life to a study of the Scriptures and was so committed to serving the almighty God and defending his cause that he was willing to prove his zeal by doing whatever it would take. Oh sure, he had heard these Christians claim that those who rejected Jesus as Messiah were wrong and that God would prove that one day, but Saul could safely ignore those claims. Jesus was a failed Messiah “wanna-be” that was all. All they needed to do was look at his crucifixion. In that moment, Paul had looked at the idea of Jesus being the Messiah and could see clearly that he wasn’t. No Messiah would die at the hands of the pagan Romans on a shameful cross. That was how criminals died. He saw nothing there of note, and was sure that he was doing the right thing by rejecting this blasphemy towards the true God. He would demonstrate his loyalty to God by ridding Israel of this heresy as quickly as was humanly possible.
Although some have argued against Saul’s legal ability to go around killing disciples, it is certain that the early Christian communities would have taken his threats quite seriously. Saul was there giving approval to Stephen’s stoning death and it is quite possible that Saul and Stephen knew each other before Stephen’s conversion to Christianity. If that is how someone he knew was treated what would that mean for the many Christians that didn’t know him. Those threats were serious, and whether they were strictly legal or not, Saul seemed to have enough authority behind him in the form of approval letters from the Sanhedrin, and he certainly had the will and determination to carry out those threats. Stephen was willing to die for what he believed to be the truth and Saul was willing to kill for what he believed to be the truth. It was certainly a stark difference. As F.F. Bruce stated in his book “Paul”, Stephen argued that “the new has come, therefore the old must go.” While Saul reasoned that “the old must stay, therefore the new must go.” Something clearly had to give.
Saul’s zeal is demonstrated in that he wasn’t just willing to deal with issues with Christians as they came up. He wanted to go hunt down disciples and eradicate this movement before it could spread any further than it already had. He was going to round them up and take them to prison in Jerusalem, and seemed to be quite willing to put to death any who caused trouble or refused to recant. As Paul packed up for his trip to Damascus, a town about 150 miles from Jerusalem, he had letters of authority in his bag and the determined warmth in his heart of knowing that he was doing the right thing.
We don’t know and aren’t told what Paul was doing as he made the journey between Jerusalem and Damascus but we can probably guess that he may have been praying and asking for continued guidance from the Lord or perhaps he was meditating on the presence of the Lord. But whatever he was doing, he was suddenly shaken into the moment as a bright light from heaven flashed all around him. The light was so bright and unexpected that it caused Saul to fall to the ground. Paul had presumably never experienced anything like this before but he would have almost assuredly associated this light with the Shekinah glory of God described in the Old Testament. The divine voice coming from the realm of heaven was similar to other instances of God’s voice being heard (Gen. 22:11; 46:2; Ex. 31-6; 1 Sam. 3:4; Isa. 6:8; Lk. 3:22; 9:35).
But this voice had a question for Saul. Why was he persecuting me, asked the divine voice? This must have been a shocking question for Saul. Who was he persecuting? Far be it from Saul to ever do anything that would injure the almighty God. He had made a life of serving him, not persecuting him. He was defending God. He just couldn’t be wrong about that. But then the voice clearly identified himself. It was Jesus. In that moment Saul’s life changed forever.
Saul would later say that at this moment God had revealed his son to him (Gal. 1:16); he had seen Jesus face to face for himself (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8). Jesus was alive. His disciples had been right and Saul had been monumentally wrong. He could no longer deny that as he stood stunned in the divine presence of Jesus. That was the kicker. He hadn’t just seen Jesus, he was seeing him in the realm of heaven. This meant that Jesus had truly ascended to the right hand of the Father, just as Stephen had claimed. He was the Messiah. All of God’s promises had really been answered “yes” in him (2 Cor. 1:20). It was in this moment that Paul began the journey of discovery that would eventually lead to his realization that he had been viewing Jesus from a worldly point of view (2 Cor. 5:16). Saul had looked at the cross as evidence of Jesus’ failure as a claimed Messiah, but he would soon realize that it was his very confirmation. The cross was how all of God’s promises came together in Christ. From this moment on, Saul would no longer view Jesus the Messiah from a worldly point of view.
Perhaps the next most shocking realization beyond the fact that Jesus really had resurrected from the dead and was the Messiah ruling from the heavenly realm, was that these people that Paul had been so full of zeal to hunt down were the King’s people. To strike them was to strike the ascended Jesus. Saul would learn the lesson well that whatever was true of the Messiah was true of his people. When Saul persecuted them, it was really Christ he was persecuting because they were an extension of him. Not only that, but Saul would later go on to realize that all that Christ had in his identity as the Son of God and the true Messiah also belonged to those in Christ (see Rom. 6:1-14).
Not only did Jesus identify himself and place himself as the true target of Saul’s persecutions, he also ordered that Saul go into the city of Damascus and await further instructions. We are told that his companions heard a sound but that Christ did not reveal himself to them, they could only see the bright light and hear a noise but could not distinguish a voice (Acts 22:9; cf. Jn. 12:29 for a similar phenomenon). Saul’s friends led him into the city. Once there, Saul was so stunned by his encounter with the resurrected Jesus that he spent the next three days still blinded (perhaps as God’s way of showing Saul that he had been blind spiritually all along) unable to eat or drink. He apparently did nothing more than pray and fast. Saul had always had total belief in the God of Israel and now he had come to total belief in Jesus Christ as his saving agent but he was about to learn that not only does faith require that we believe in God but also that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (cf. Heb. 11:6). Saul had come to a point of total belief but he would soon find out about total conversion and total commitment. He would soon find out what it would really require of him to serve the living God.
Devotional Thought
Many people already feel like they have had their “Damascus road” experience in coming to the realization of the truth about God and Jesus but feel very uncomfortable with the thought that God might want to use them as his “bright light” in the life of someone else. Ask God to use you as his “light” to shine into the life of someone and be prepared to be bold as you lovingly show them that everything they thought they knew was perhaps not quite accurate.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Acts 8:26-40
Philip and the Ethiopian
26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian[a] eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.
31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”[b]
34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
36 As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” [37] [c] 38 And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39 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, but went on his way rejoicing. 40 Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.
Dig Deeper
Every year on Christmas Eve my family on my mother’s side has had a tradition to gather together for a big party. This tradition now goes back over forty years and is something that we all look forward to every year. As part of that evening we have the main traditional event of the night in which the classic poem “The Night Before Christmas” is read. My Uncle Joe started this tradition and it has continued on through all of those years even though he died many years ago now. The Christmas Eve party this year was no different as all of the traditions were carried on. After the reading of the poem, however, something unique happened this year. My Aunt Roberta, my Uncle Joe’s widow, declared that she had something to read too. Everyone hushed and listened up because she is still kind of the “Grande Dame” of Christmas Eve in our minds. As she began to read, the words that flowed from her were measured and steady. She read of a little boy who wanted to comfort his mother before his first day of school. The mother was worried and scared, but the little boy assured his mommy that he was a big boy now and every thing would be okay. We all listened mesmerized by the prose that she read. It was emotional and touching. Yet none of us completely understood why she was reading it. As she finished, we were all left to sit and ponder our own childhoods and how quickly they had raced by as well as how fleeting are the days that we have with our own children. As my Aunt closed the little diary from which she was reading, she looked up and said that this was a story that she wrote for her sister when her son Michael was getting ready for his first day of school. I was stunned. I had never considered that I was that little boy. The story that she had read that was so moving and thought-provoking was about me. I was actually part of the story. It brought a whole new meaning for me to the story and made it real in a way that I could have never imagined.
The book of Acts is full of narratives and it is in and of itself a narrative. It doesn’t just have the obvious smaller narratives like Peter preaching to thousands on the day of Pentecost or Stephen standing up boldly in front of the hostile Sanhedrin and eventually being stoned to death for doing so. The book of Acts is also full of narratives that run just beneath the surface of the text but that flow all through the veins of Luke’s writing. The grand story of Acts (narrative is, after all, just another word for story), is the spreading of the good news that the Messiah had come, had defeated man’s ultimate enemy of death, had shown himself to be the true king of the world, and had finally made the promised family of God available to all people. Now that is quite a story. You can imagine the responses of those who heard this story for the first time. But imagine hearing that story for the first time and then finding out that it involved you. It wasn’t just a story about a king and some other people. You were actually part of the grand narrative. That would make it real in a way that you could have never imagined.
As Luke shifts gears, it is significant to note that the Spirit calls Philip away from a successful and fertile ground of evangelism to a desert road that would have had very little traffic on it at the time. That must have seemed like a strange and possibly even frustrating call for Philip to have received. But he trusted God more than he trusted the seeming circumstances and so he went. As he was going down the road he saw a chariot which must have been a welcome sight to see anyone at this point. This was no regular person in this chariot, though (it would have been a little like seeing a limousine driving down the way). The chariot would almost assuredly have been drawn by an ox and so it would have been quite easy for Philip to run up and catch the chariot and then walk along side of it where he heard this Ethiopian man reading aloud which was the common practice in the first century as reading silently was almost unheard of.
The Ethiopian, we are told, was a eunuch and an important official in charge of the treasure of the Kandake of Ethiopia. The area that he was from would actually have been what is now modern day Sudan rather than modern Ethiopia. He was a black African man and was a eunuch which was a common condition for those in important royal positions back then as they could be more trusted after they had been castrated (the word for “eunuch” could be used more generically to refer to any government official but most likely carried the meaning here that he actually had been castrated). He was basically the secretary of the treasury for the Queen of Ethiopia, known as the Kandake. The kings of Ethiopia were believed to be the child of the sun and were considered too sacred and divine to be bothered with the everyday tasks of a monarch, thus the Kandake, the queen-mother, was the functional ruler. It would have been her to whom this man answered.
He was returning home after coming to Jerusalem to worship, although it is unlikely that he was Jewish or a Jewish convert as Eunuchs were specifically banned from taking part in the full membership and function of God’s people (Deut. 23:1). We are not told the details of why he was worshiping in Jerusalem but it is not hard to imagine why it was that even to those who were excluded from numbering themselves among God’s people fully, the piety and discipline of the Jewish faith still had a great deal of appeal. This man, we must be clear though, was an outsider to God’s people, barred by the law from ever fully being accepted as part of God’s people. He was as we all were at one time, or to borrow Paul’s words from Ephesians 2:12, he was “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.”
It would have taken some courage to approach this important official but Philip had been ordered by the Spirit and absolutely obeyed. As he approached and heard the Ethiopian reading from Isaiah he asked him if he knew what he was reading. The specific passage that Luke reports that was being read comes from Isaiah 53. It is a passage that has to do with the suffering and injustice experienced by the servant of the Lord. The faithful servant would be the one who would serve as a representative for all of the people through his suffering and take upon himself the iniquity of all. The Ethiopian was understandably confused by this. To whom was this passage referring? Who could possibly take the sin of all people upon himself? Who could take on such a task at the Lord’s bidding (Isa. 53:10) and still be given “a portion among the great” (Isa. 53:12)?
The exciting news was from Philip was that this time had come. The suffering servant of Isaiah was one and the same with the Davidic Messiah that most Jews were waiting for (there is no evidence that anyone connected these two figures as one before the time of Jesus). God had finally sent the rescuing servant and it was Jesus.
But there is more that we must understand that Luke no doubt expected his readers to see by including the specific detail that this man was a eunuch. As we mentioned earlier, Eunuchs were barred from participation in the assembly of the Lord’s people. But as the book of Isaiah continues to talk of the suffering servant of the Lord, he holds out a specific promise for the outcasts such as eunuchs, “Let no foreigner who is bound to the LORD say, ‘The LORD will surely exclude me from his people’. And let no eunuch complain, ‘I am only a dry tree’.” For a time is coming, declares Isaiah, when all people will be brought into God’s family; all people will be accepted and God’s house, his dwelling place, will finally be called a house of prayer for all nations (Isaiah 56:1-7).
Can you imagine if you were this man hearing this all from Philip for the first time. The great narrative of God working among his people from which he was reading, included him. Even the eunuchs would finally be brought into God’s people. And that time was happening now. The story was about him and all people like him. The outsiders were being brought into God’s kingdom.
As they continued on, Philip explained the rest of the good news which no doubt included much of what Peter had told the Jews on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. It is no wonder after hearing the good news that the suffering servant had come and fulfilled God’s promises by taking his wrath onto himself and opening up God’s promises to even the eunuchs that this man was more than ready to jump in and share in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection by being fully immersed in the waters of baptism (cf. Rom. 6:1-14).
We are told by Luke that the Ethiopian continued on his way but history seems to indicate that he well understood the true nature of the life to which he had been called. Second century church leader Irenaeus reports that this man went on to evangelize his own country and created large enclaves of Christians in northern Africa. Despite the fact that some have used this passage to argue for lone ranger Christianity, meaning that Christians don’t really need to be part of specific Christian family or community of true believers, Luke intended to convey nothing of the sort. This man knew that he had been brought into God’s family and that God had called him during a unique time for the unique task of opening God’s family up to the people of Ethiopia (Incidentally, early church writings indicate that this man went on to build a huge Christian community in northern Africa). It is, by the way, no coincidence that during the days of Luke, Ethiopia was called the ends of the earth. Just as the gospel had been brought to Samaria, as Luke has described in the last passage, so it was truly beginning its journey to the ends of the earth just had Jesus had promised (Acts 1:8).
The Bible is really one grand narrative that weaves together the promises that God has given mankind and tells the story of those who believe those promises. Paul boldly declared in 2 Corinthians 1:20 that “no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ.” Just as the Ethiopian found that true and found his own part in God’s story we each have our own part as well. God’s promises stand true whether you are riding in a chariot in Gaza or sitting at a computer right now. What are you waiting for? Go join in and be part of the story.
Devotional Thought
Are you as prone to listening to the guidance of the Spirit as Philip was? Imagine what might have never happened had he not obeyed the urging of the Spirit. What is the Spirit guiding you to do today? Who might he want you to talk to? Who is your “Ethiopian”?
26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian[a] eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.
31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.”[b]
34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
36 As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” [37] [c] 38 And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39 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, but went on his way rejoicing. 40 Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.
Dig Deeper
Every year on Christmas Eve my family on my mother’s side has had a tradition to gather together for a big party. This tradition now goes back over forty years and is something that we all look forward to every year. As part of that evening we have the main traditional event of the night in which the classic poem “The Night Before Christmas” is read. My Uncle Joe started this tradition and it has continued on through all of those years even though he died many years ago now. The Christmas Eve party this year was no different as all of the traditions were carried on. After the reading of the poem, however, something unique happened this year. My Aunt Roberta, my Uncle Joe’s widow, declared that she had something to read too. Everyone hushed and listened up because she is still kind of the “Grande Dame” of Christmas Eve in our minds. As she began to read, the words that flowed from her were measured and steady. She read of a little boy who wanted to comfort his mother before his first day of school. The mother was worried and scared, but the little boy assured his mommy that he was a big boy now and every thing would be okay. We all listened mesmerized by the prose that she read. It was emotional and touching. Yet none of us completely understood why she was reading it. As she finished, we were all left to sit and ponder our own childhoods and how quickly they had raced by as well as how fleeting are the days that we have with our own children. As my Aunt closed the little diary from which she was reading, she looked up and said that this was a story that she wrote for her sister when her son Michael was getting ready for his first day of school. I was stunned. I had never considered that I was that little boy. The story that she had read that was so moving and thought-provoking was about me. I was actually part of the story. It brought a whole new meaning for me to the story and made it real in a way that I could have never imagined.
The book of Acts is full of narratives and it is in and of itself a narrative. It doesn’t just have the obvious smaller narratives like Peter preaching to thousands on the day of Pentecost or Stephen standing up boldly in front of the hostile Sanhedrin and eventually being stoned to death for doing so. The book of Acts is also full of narratives that run just beneath the surface of the text but that flow all through the veins of Luke’s writing. The grand story of Acts (narrative is, after all, just another word for story), is the spreading of the good news that the Messiah had come, had defeated man’s ultimate enemy of death, had shown himself to be the true king of the world, and had finally made the promised family of God available to all people. Now that is quite a story. You can imagine the responses of those who heard this story for the first time. But imagine hearing that story for the first time and then finding out that it involved you. It wasn’t just a story about a king and some other people. You were actually part of the grand narrative. That would make it real in a way that you could have never imagined.
As Luke shifts gears, it is significant to note that the Spirit calls Philip away from a successful and fertile ground of evangelism to a desert road that would have had very little traffic on it at the time. That must have seemed like a strange and possibly even frustrating call for Philip to have received. But he trusted God more than he trusted the seeming circumstances and so he went. As he was going down the road he saw a chariot which must have been a welcome sight to see anyone at this point. This was no regular person in this chariot, though (it would have been a little like seeing a limousine driving down the way). The chariot would almost assuredly have been drawn by an ox and so it would have been quite easy for Philip to run up and catch the chariot and then walk along side of it where he heard this Ethiopian man reading aloud which was the common practice in the first century as reading silently was almost unheard of.
The Ethiopian, we are told, was a eunuch and an important official in charge of the treasure of the Kandake of Ethiopia. The area that he was from would actually have been what is now modern day Sudan rather than modern Ethiopia. He was a black African man and was a eunuch which was a common condition for those in important royal positions back then as they could be more trusted after they had been castrated (the word for “eunuch” could be used more generically to refer to any government official but most likely carried the meaning here that he actually had been castrated). He was basically the secretary of the treasury for the Queen of Ethiopia, known as the Kandake. The kings of Ethiopia were believed to be the child of the sun and were considered too sacred and divine to be bothered with the everyday tasks of a monarch, thus the Kandake, the queen-mother, was the functional ruler. It would have been her to whom this man answered.
He was returning home after coming to Jerusalem to worship, although it is unlikely that he was Jewish or a Jewish convert as Eunuchs were specifically banned from taking part in the full membership and function of God’s people (Deut. 23:1). We are not told the details of why he was worshiping in Jerusalem but it is not hard to imagine why it was that even to those who were excluded from numbering themselves among God’s people fully, the piety and discipline of the Jewish faith still had a great deal of appeal. This man, we must be clear though, was an outsider to God’s people, barred by the law from ever fully being accepted as part of God’s people. He was as we all were at one time, or to borrow Paul’s words from Ephesians 2:12, he was “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.”
It would have taken some courage to approach this important official but Philip had been ordered by the Spirit and absolutely obeyed. As he approached and heard the Ethiopian reading from Isaiah he asked him if he knew what he was reading. The specific passage that Luke reports that was being read comes from Isaiah 53. It is a passage that has to do with the suffering and injustice experienced by the servant of the Lord. The faithful servant would be the one who would serve as a representative for all of the people through his suffering and take upon himself the iniquity of all. The Ethiopian was understandably confused by this. To whom was this passage referring? Who could possibly take the sin of all people upon himself? Who could take on such a task at the Lord’s bidding (Isa. 53:10) and still be given “a portion among the great” (Isa. 53:12)?
The exciting news was from Philip was that this time had come. The suffering servant of Isaiah was one and the same with the Davidic Messiah that most Jews were waiting for (there is no evidence that anyone connected these two figures as one before the time of Jesus). God had finally sent the rescuing servant and it was Jesus.
But there is more that we must understand that Luke no doubt expected his readers to see by including the specific detail that this man was a eunuch. As we mentioned earlier, Eunuchs were barred from participation in the assembly of the Lord’s people. But as the book of Isaiah continues to talk of the suffering servant of the Lord, he holds out a specific promise for the outcasts such as eunuchs, “Let no foreigner who is bound to the LORD say, ‘The LORD will surely exclude me from his people’. And let no eunuch complain, ‘I am only a dry tree’.” For a time is coming, declares Isaiah, when all people will be brought into God’s family; all people will be accepted and God’s house, his dwelling place, will finally be called a house of prayer for all nations (Isaiah 56:1-7).
Can you imagine if you were this man hearing this all from Philip for the first time. The great narrative of God working among his people from which he was reading, included him. Even the eunuchs would finally be brought into God’s people. And that time was happening now. The story was about him and all people like him. The outsiders were being brought into God’s kingdom.
As they continued on, Philip explained the rest of the good news which no doubt included much of what Peter had told the Jews on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. It is no wonder after hearing the good news that the suffering servant had come and fulfilled God’s promises by taking his wrath onto himself and opening up God’s promises to even the eunuchs that this man was more than ready to jump in and share in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection by being fully immersed in the waters of baptism (cf. Rom. 6:1-14).
We are told by Luke that the Ethiopian continued on his way but history seems to indicate that he well understood the true nature of the life to which he had been called. Second century church leader Irenaeus reports that this man went on to evangelize his own country and created large enclaves of Christians in northern Africa. Despite the fact that some have used this passage to argue for lone ranger Christianity, meaning that Christians don’t really need to be part of specific Christian family or community of true believers, Luke intended to convey nothing of the sort. This man knew that he had been brought into God’s family and that God had called him during a unique time for the unique task of opening God’s family up to the people of Ethiopia (Incidentally, early church writings indicate that this man went on to build a huge Christian community in northern Africa). It is, by the way, no coincidence that during the days of Luke, Ethiopia was called the ends of the earth. Just as the gospel had been brought to Samaria, as Luke has described in the last passage, so it was truly beginning its journey to the ends of the earth just had Jesus had promised (Acts 1:8).
The Bible is really one grand narrative that weaves together the promises that God has given mankind and tells the story of those who believe those promises. Paul boldly declared in 2 Corinthians 1:20 that “no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ.” Just as the Ethiopian found that true and found his own part in God’s story we each have our own part as well. God’s promises stand true whether you are riding in a chariot in Gaza or sitting at a computer right now. What are you waiting for? Go join in and be part of the story.
Devotional Thought
Are you as prone to listening to the guidance of the Spirit as Philip was? Imagine what might have never happened had he not obeyed the urging of the Spirit. What is the Spirit guiding you to do today? Who might he want you to talk to? Who is your “Ethiopian”?
Monday, January 17, 2011
Acts 8:4-25
Philip in Samaria
4 Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. 5 Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there. 6 When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said. 7 For with shrieks, impure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. 8 So there was great joy in that city.
Simon the Sorcerer
9 Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, 10 and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” 11 They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. 12 But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13 Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.
14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. 15 When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16 because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
18 When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money 19 and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”
20 Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! 21 You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. 22 Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. 23 For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”
24 Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”
25 After they had further proclaimed the word of the Lord and testified about Jesus, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages.
Dig Deeper
One movie that nearly everyone who grew up as a teenager in the United States during the 1980’s will remember is the teen classic “Can’t buy Me Love.” In that movie a very unpopular and nerdy young man who had been saving up $1500 for a telescope bumps into his dream girl at the mall. This very popular cheerleader had borrowed an extremely expensive dress from her mother without asking, had worn it to a party only to ruin it, and was at the mall trying to exchange the dress for a new one at the store where her mother had purchased it. The young man overhears her plight and immediately hatches a plan. If she will pretend to be his girlfriend for one month he will give her his $1500 dollars so that she can buy a new dress and her mother will never know what happened. His thinking was that if everyone at school thought that they were dating and in love that he would quickly become very popular as well. She accepts the plan and things start out going well, but in the end he discovers that he was sadly mistaken. He could not buy either popularity or love. It was just as the Beetles had sung in the 1960’s, “I don’t care too much for money, ‘cause money can’t buy me love.”
That movie has always reminded me of the old saying that declares that you cannot buy love or happiness. That is true I suppose. You really cannot purchase true love or true happiness, there is little dispute to that. This passage in Acts makes it clear that there is at least one other thing that can be added to the list of things that money cannot buy. Money might be able to buy goods, services, power, prestige, and many other things but it cannot buy the important things in life. It cannot buy love. It cannot buy true happiness. And it cannot buy the Holy Spirit. In fact, thinking that the Holy Spirit is a commodity that can be purchased from men or even from God by doing the right things or “giving generously” so that he will “bless us” with the Spirit. As Jesus made clear, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (Jn. 3:8). The Holy Spirit is God and his power can neither be purchased or harnessed. To attempt to do so, is to demonstrate a crucial and exceedingly dangerous misconception as to the very nature of God and his work in the world.
Acts 8 is another of those great passages that demonstrate the sovereignty of God. Time and again, what man plans for evil, God uses and turns for good. The Sanhedrin had given Saul permission to put his zeal for God to good use and to stamp out this new movement of Jesus followers. They had believed that the old adage “if you cut off the head, the snake will die,” would hold true for those who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, but they quickly found out that they were wrong. These people had the power of the Holy Spirit moving in them and among them and animating the common life that they shared as the family of God. So rather than being truly harmed by the persecution of Saul and the Sanhedrin, it actually facilitated the next stage in the spreading of the gospel as Jesus had promised that they would be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Phase 1 had begun and now as they were scattered into other places, they continued to preach the word wherever they went, including the area of Samaria which would have taken great boldness as the Samaritans and Jews did not get along at well. But this was always to be one family of all nations as was symbolized at Pentecost day as Jews from every nation received the message of the gospel. In this passage Luke will show us how the gospel began to be preached to those that were firmly on the fringes and were considered virtual outcasts of the Jewish people.
Although going to preach in Samaria was a bold move, it would not have been completely out of context. Not only had Jesus foretold that the mission would eventually go into Samaria, the Samaritans also believed that God would send a prophet or Messiah as he had promised in Deuteronomy 18:15. Philip was one of the seven men who were giving the responsibility of overseeing the ministry of bread distribution to the widows and on whom the apostles had laid their hands, giving him the Spirit-given ability to perform signs and wonders through the miraculous gifts of the Spirit. As he came into the region of Samaria, he boldly preached that the resurrected Jesus was the Messiah that they had been waiting for. To demonstrate that his words were truly from God, he performed the kind of authentic signs and wonders that caught the attention of the people. It was confirmation that God was really behind this message.
This all brought the notice of Simon. Simon was a man who had practiced sorcery and wowed the people for some time and thought that he was truly a big deal. Philip was stepping into his turf and gaining the attention that was normally Simon’s. We aren’t told exactly what sorts of sorcery Simon had performed but it was enough to sway the people and fool them into thinking that he had the power of God flowing through him. But Simon’s great works only pointed people to him. Philip was different. Not only did his signs and wonders evidently seem to be of a different level of truth and power, they also pointed not to Philip but to the kingdom of God. As they accepted Philip’s message of the gospel, they were baptized into the life of Christ and became full members of the Messiah’s family. Even Simon was apparently so amazed by Philip’s works that he was baptized as well, probably with the hopes that his own powers and abilities would increase all the more. But as Luke continues on in this account, it becomes quickly obvious that Simon’s faith wasn’t real. It was more along the lines of the Jews who “believed” in Jesus after hearing his message (Jn. 8:31) and then tried to kill him just a few minutes later when they heard the totality of what he was truly preaching (Jn. 8:59).
Luke tells us that when the Samaritans were baptized that they had “simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.” Although some have taken this to mean that Luke is saying that the Samaritans had the Spirit withheld from them, there is no indication of that. His point in telling this story is not as much to describe what happened with the Samaritans as a group as it is to describe what happened with Simon. Simon was taken aback and enamored with the miraculous gifts of the Spirit. He had no interest in the subtle but still powerful action of the Holy Spirit coming into the life of the believer at their baptism (Acts 2:38), the gift that serves as a down payment and guarantee of the inheritance of the believer (Eph. 1:14), and who gently guides believers in their transformation of the life of Christ (Gal. 5:22-26). These Samaritans were true believers who had been baptized into Christ and received the Holy Spirit just as had promised to all who believe but that was it. They had not received the miraculous power of the Spirit coming upon them, allowing them to perform the signs and wonders of the Spirit. This was a special gift that came only as the apostles laid hands on believers and allowed the Spirit to come upon them in this special way. This is what interested Simon.
His nominal belief and baptism had not given him what he wanted because he was not interested in the genuine life of Christ. But when he saw that the apostles laid hands on the people and they began to exhibit the same impressive signs of the Spirit as had Philip, that caught his attention. That is what he wanted. He wanted the power and prestige. Notice that he immediately offered money to the apostles to purchase that gift. But it wasn’t even the gift of the miracles that he wanted. He wanted the ability to pass on the gifts as the apostles had. He wanted what he saw as the real power and control.
But, we might ask, why would Luke have spent so much time to focus on Simon and what he wanted? Certainly this stood as a warning to anyone who thought that the power of the Spirit was there for their own advancement, excitement, blessing, or prestige. There are many who fall into this same error today, often referred to as Simony, or the attempt to purchase the gifts of God. Today, the appeals of this nature are much more subtle and spiritual sounding than Simon’s request to just buy the power, but the heart is the same. People are promised advancement, blessing, and spiritual power if they will tithe more, give bigger amounts, and sow seeds in the ministry of one person or another. These are attempts to control the Spirit which is exactly why Peter rebuked Simon so harshly. His heart was shown through his actions and he had no part in their ministry. Peter warned him harshly and made clear that the only hope that Simon, or anyone prone to that same error had, was to immediately repent and plead with the Lord for forgiveness. There was nothing down the road that Simon was heading except bitterness and captivity to sin. Simon wanted power not the Holy Spirit. With power comes self-adulation. With the Spirit comes self-denial. Simon couldn’t see the vital difference.
But there is another important reason why Luke likely spent so much time describing Simon’s encounter. (Which is not an insignificant thing considering the great cost of writing and copying text in the ancient world which meant that every word mattered greatly. There were no empty words in the ancient texts.) Christians of later generations would go on to describe Simon as a man who would become the greatest nemesis to both the apostle Peter and the church in general. He is attributed by some (as early as Justin Martyr in 150 AD) as being the father of the Gnostic heresies which appeared early in the Christian movement as an alternative to true Christianity and swayed many from the truth. Gnosticism appealed to a secret knowledge that was only available to some and would bring great advancement to those who engaged in the Gnostic form of Christianity. Justin Martyr would go on to say that Simon was very active in Rome (possibly by the time that Luke was writing Acts) and caused great trouble for those who held to the true gospel. It is quite possible then that Luke, as he was writing to Theolphilus, who was quite possibly an important Roman official, thought it necessary to describe the roots of Simon’s “belief” and warn others to stay away from him and to not go down his same path.
Simon’s final recorded words are quite interesting. He didn’t pray for himself for repentance or even ask Peter to, but asked Peter to pray that he would be spared from judgment. Luke doesn’t go any further into that but seems to indicate that Simon had sealed his own fate, as history verifies. Simon’s attempts to purchase the power of the Spirit for himself would fail and although they would lead many astray, the truth of the gospel continued to march through the rest of the Samaritan villages. False versions of the gospel may be quite powerful but they will never fully derail the truth. They can neither control the Spirit for themselves or keep it from others.
Devotional Thought
Peter was immediately able to discern Simon’s errors in his thinking about the Holy Spirit and he confronted him directly out of his love for the true believers. Are you equally able to recognize false teachings and attitudes and have the conviction to stand up to them when needed?
4 Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. 5 Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there. 6 When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said. 7 For with shrieks, impure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. 8 So there was great joy in that city.
Simon the Sorcerer
9 Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, 10 and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” 11 They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. 12 But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13 Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.
14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. 15 When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16 because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
18 When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money 19 and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”
20 Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! 21 You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. 22 Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. 23 For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”
24 Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”
25 After they had further proclaimed the word of the Lord and testified about Jesus, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages.
Dig Deeper
One movie that nearly everyone who grew up as a teenager in the United States during the 1980’s will remember is the teen classic “Can’t buy Me Love.” In that movie a very unpopular and nerdy young man who had been saving up $1500 for a telescope bumps into his dream girl at the mall. This very popular cheerleader had borrowed an extremely expensive dress from her mother without asking, had worn it to a party only to ruin it, and was at the mall trying to exchange the dress for a new one at the store where her mother had purchased it. The young man overhears her plight and immediately hatches a plan. If she will pretend to be his girlfriend for one month he will give her his $1500 dollars so that she can buy a new dress and her mother will never know what happened. His thinking was that if everyone at school thought that they were dating and in love that he would quickly become very popular as well. She accepts the plan and things start out going well, but in the end he discovers that he was sadly mistaken. He could not buy either popularity or love. It was just as the Beetles had sung in the 1960’s, “I don’t care too much for money, ‘cause money can’t buy me love.”
That movie has always reminded me of the old saying that declares that you cannot buy love or happiness. That is true I suppose. You really cannot purchase true love or true happiness, there is little dispute to that. This passage in Acts makes it clear that there is at least one other thing that can be added to the list of things that money cannot buy. Money might be able to buy goods, services, power, prestige, and many other things but it cannot buy the important things in life. It cannot buy love. It cannot buy true happiness. And it cannot buy the Holy Spirit. In fact, thinking that the Holy Spirit is a commodity that can be purchased from men or even from God by doing the right things or “giving generously” so that he will “bless us” with the Spirit. As Jesus made clear, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (Jn. 3:8). The Holy Spirit is God and his power can neither be purchased or harnessed. To attempt to do so, is to demonstrate a crucial and exceedingly dangerous misconception as to the very nature of God and his work in the world.
Acts 8 is another of those great passages that demonstrate the sovereignty of God. Time and again, what man plans for evil, God uses and turns for good. The Sanhedrin had given Saul permission to put his zeal for God to good use and to stamp out this new movement of Jesus followers. They had believed that the old adage “if you cut off the head, the snake will die,” would hold true for those who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, but they quickly found out that they were wrong. These people had the power of the Holy Spirit moving in them and among them and animating the common life that they shared as the family of God. So rather than being truly harmed by the persecution of Saul and the Sanhedrin, it actually facilitated the next stage in the spreading of the gospel as Jesus had promised that they would be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Phase 1 had begun and now as they were scattered into other places, they continued to preach the word wherever they went, including the area of Samaria which would have taken great boldness as the Samaritans and Jews did not get along at well. But this was always to be one family of all nations as was symbolized at Pentecost day as Jews from every nation received the message of the gospel. In this passage Luke will show us how the gospel began to be preached to those that were firmly on the fringes and were considered virtual outcasts of the Jewish people.
Although going to preach in Samaria was a bold move, it would not have been completely out of context. Not only had Jesus foretold that the mission would eventually go into Samaria, the Samaritans also believed that God would send a prophet or Messiah as he had promised in Deuteronomy 18:15. Philip was one of the seven men who were giving the responsibility of overseeing the ministry of bread distribution to the widows and on whom the apostles had laid their hands, giving him the Spirit-given ability to perform signs and wonders through the miraculous gifts of the Spirit. As he came into the region of Samaria, he boldly preached that the resurrected Jesus was the Messiah that they had been waiting for. To demonstrate that his words were truly from God, he performed the kind of authentic signs and wonders that caught the attention of the people. It was confirmation that God was really behind this message.
This all brought the notice of Simon. Simon was a man who had practiced sorcery and wowed the people for some time and thought that he was truly a big deal. Philip was stepping into his turf and gaining the attention that was normally Simon’s. We aren’t told exactly what sorts of sorcery Simon had performed but it was enough to sway the people and fool them into thinking that he had the power of God flowing through him. But Simon’s great works only pointed people to him. Philip was different. Not only did his signs and wonders evidently seem to be of a different level of truth and power, they also pointed not to Philip but to the kingdom of God. As they accepted Philip’s message of the gospel, they were baptized into the life of Christ and became full members of the Messiah’s family. Even Simon was apparently so amazed by Philip’s works that he was baptized as well, probably with the hopes that his own powers and abilities would increase all the more. But as Luke continues on in this account, it becomes quickly obvious that Simon’s faith wasn’t real. It was more along the lines of the Jews who “believed” in Jesus after hearing his message (Jn. 8:31) and then tried to kill him just a few minutes later when they heard the totality of what he was truly preaching (Jn. 8:59).
Luke tells us that when the Samaritans were baptized that they had “simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.” Although some have taken this to mean that Luke is saying that the Samaritans had the Spirit withheld from them, there is no indication of that. His point in telling this story is not as much to describe what happened with the Samaritans as a group as it is to describe what happened with Simon. Simon was taken aback and enamored with the miraculous gifts of the Spirit. He had no interest in the subtle but still powerful action of the Holy Spirit coming into the life of the believer at their baptism (Acts 2:38), the gift that serves as a down payment and guarantee of the inheritance of the believer (Eph. 1:14), and who gently guides believers in their transformation of the life of Christ (Gal. 5:22-26). These Samaritans were true believers who had been baptized into Christ and received the Holy Spirit just as had promised to all who believe but that was it. They had not received the miraculous power of the Spirit coming upon them, allowing them to perform the signs and wonders of the Spirit. This was a special gift that came only as the apostles laid hands on believers and allowed the Spirit to come upon them in this special way. This is what interested Simon.
His nominal belief and baptism had not given him what he wanted because he was not interested in the genuine life of Christ. But when he saw that the apostles laid hands on the people and they began to exhibit the same impressive signs of the Spirit as had Philip, that caught his attention. That is what he wanted. He wanted the power and prestige. Notice that he immediately offered money to the apostles to purchase that gift. But it wasn’t even the gift of the miracles that he wanted. He wanted the ability to pass on the gifts as the apostles had. He wanted what he saw as the real power and control.
But, we might ask, why would Luke have spent so much time to focus on Simon and what he wanted? Certainly this stood as a warning to anyone who thought that the power of the Spirit was there for their own advancement, excitement, blessing, or prestige. There are many who fall into this same error today, often referred to as Simony, or the attempt to purchase the gifts of God. Today, the appeals of this nature are much more subtle and spiritual sounding than Simon’s request to just buy the power, but the heart is the same. People are promised advancement, blessing, and spiritual power if they will tithe more, give bigger amounts, and sow seeds in the ministry of one person or another. These are attempts to control the Spirit which is exactly why Peter rebuked Simon so harshly. His heart was shown through his actions and he had no part in their ministry. Peter warned him harshly and made clear that the only hope that Simon, or anyone prone to that same error had, was to immediately repent and plead with the Lord for forgiveness. There was nothing down the road that Simon was heading except bitterness and captivity to sin. Simon wanted power not the Holy Spirit. With power comes self-adulation. With the Spirit comes self-denial. Simon couldn’t see the vital difference.
But there is another important reason why Luke likely spent so much time describing Simon’s encounter. (Which is not an insignificant thing considering the great cost of writing and copying text in the ancient world which meant that every word mattered greatly. There were no empty words in the ancient texts.) Christians of later generations would go on to describe Simon as a man who would become the greatest nemesis to both the apostle Peter and the church in general. He is attributed by some (as early as Justin Martyr in 150 AD) as being the father of the Gnostic heresies which appeared early in the Christian movement as an alternative to true Christianity and swayed many from the truth. Gnosticism appealed to a secret knowledge that was only available to some and would bring great advancement to those who engaged in the Gnostic form of Christianity. Justin Martyr would go on to say that Simon was very active in Rome (possibly by the time that Luke was writing Acts) and caused great trouble for those who held to the true gospel. It is quite possible then that Luke, as he was writing to Theolphilus, who was quite possibly an important Roman official, thought it necessary to describe the roots of Simon’s “belief” and warn others to stay away from him and to not go down his same path.
Simon’s final recorded words are quite interesting. He didn’t pray for himself for repentance or even ask Peter to, but asked Peter to pray that he would be spared from judgment. Luke doesn’t go any further into that but seems to indicate that Simon had sealed his own fate, as history verifies. Simon’s attempts to purchase the power of the Spirit for himself would fail and although they would lead many astray, the truth of the gospel continued to march through the rest of the Samaritan villages. False versions of the gospel may be quite powerful but they will never fully derail the truth. They can neither control the Spirit for themselves or keep it from others.
Devotional Thought
Peter was immediately able to discern Simon’s errors in his thinking about the Holy Spirit and he confronted him directly out of his love for the true believers. Are you equally able to recognize false teachings and attitudes and have the conviction to stand up to them when needed?
Friday, January 14, 2011
Acts 7:53-8:3
The Stoning of Stephen
54 When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
57 At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58 dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59 While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.
1 And Saul approved of their killing him.
The Church Persecuted and Scattered
On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.
Dig Deeper
There are only a few times in my life where I could honestly say that I felt something deep down in my core that caused me to action. Oh, it’s easy to feel strongly about something and desire to act on it, but how many times have you ever really felt something so strongly that you felt compelled to act immediately and felt no other option than to act right at that moment? When you feel something that deeply, whether your reaction is a positive or negative emotion, you almost feel as if you have no choice but to act. When we feel something that deep down in our soul, we usually say that we just felt it in our heart. Our heart is the deepest part of the “real us.” It is the seat of our emotions and will that directs our actions. So when we are cut to the heart or moved in our hearts, that is serious stuff. That means that whatever happened has connected with the deepest and strongest part of our our will and caused us to take actions that demonstrate what our true will and desires are. When something connects with our hearts, though, it usually says more about our hearts and where they are at, quite frankly, than it does about that particular thing that has moved our hearts.
In the early chapters of Acts, Luke has been developing a theme which is easily lost in many modern English translations that has to do with the hearts of the people of Israel. In Acts 2, the apostle Peter gave a stirring sermon concerning the fact that the people of Jerusalem had rejected and put to death God’s Messiah. Peter declared that God had proven that Jesus was his Messiah by raising him from the dead and now it was up to them to act. In Acts 2:37, Luke tells us that the people were “pierced to their heart,” using a word for “pierced” that meant to prick in and cause great anguish. The people had been challenged and their hearts were moved. They quickly asked what they should do and when Peter responded that the proper response was to repent and be baptized they did so.
But later in chapter 5, Peter and the other apostles are brought in to answer to the Sanhedrin for their repeated efforts in continuing to preach the gospel of the crucified, resurrected, and glorified Messiah, Jesus. As Peter boldly declared that he would not stop his activities and that Jesus was indeed the Messiah that was sent to deliver Israel and the whole world, Luke tells us in 5:33 that the members of the Sanhedrin were “cut to the heart.” This is often rendered as “furious” or something similar in modern translations which is basically correctly, but loses the theme of words that Luke was carefully creating. The Sanhedrin heard Peter’s words, the same core message that pierced the men and women in chapter 2 to their hearts, and they were also moved in their hearts. But it wasn’t so much of a wound of anguish, but a cut of vexation. They were moved very deeply just as the people at Pentecost were and by the very same words, but their response was ultimately very different.
In this passage Luke has just concluded giving us a summary of Stephen’s speech to this group of religious leaders. His message consisted of much of the same content as Peter’s in the two previously mentioned examples. Israel had strayed from God’s plan and had rejected his Messiah. When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, says Luke, they were “furious.” But Luke uses the same word for “cut” (diaprio) that he used in 5:33 and the same word for heart (kardio) that he had used in 2:37. Once again, the religious leaders of Israel had heard the message of the gospel and it had moved them in their hearts. But it had not moved them to humility and repentance as it had some. It moved them to anger and violence. How could the same message have such a different outcome in the hearts of the people?
What it really boils down to is not the message. That was the same. What Luke was showing us was the content of the heart. That’s what determines how it is effected. This is contrary to what most people nowadays think. We tend to believe that people are basically the same and are effected by their environments and what goes on around them, but Luke is showing us differently. People that lived in the same place and time, hearing the same message, were moved quite differently in their hearts because their hearts were different. Just as the same sunbeam can harden mud into brick or melt chocolate into goo based on the unique make-up of each item, so hearts that were sincerely humble to God were pricked to repentance by the message of the gospel. But those who had hardened themselves to God and desired their own gratification, well those hearts reacted quite explosively to the message of the early Christians.
The hearts of the Sanhedrin leaders had already turned against the possibility of Jesus being the Messiah, so Stephen’s words aroused rage, not humility. His words brought out the rebellion and rage that was already entrenched in their hearts. But Stephen’s reaction stood in stark opposition. Perhaps he was there during the events of Acts 2 and watched as many had their hearts pierced with the truth of the gospel. It is clear, though, that his heart was filled with the Holy Spirit rather than his own will. As he looked up, he saw the realm of heaven breaking into the present reality as though a curtain was being pulled back to reveal what is always there but can’t be seen.
His statement that he could see into heaven would have been significant and even more offensive to the Jewish leaders on two grounds. The first was that the standard Jewish belief was that the Temple was the place where God’s realm of heaven broke into the present physical age. This was further evidence that Stephen and the early church were claiming the place of God’s Temple over and above the physical structure of the Temple. The second was that it had not been very long since Jesus stood before this same Sanhedrin and declared that they would “see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mk. 14:62). Stephen was now standing in the same place, making the same claim for Jesus, and verifying that he was right, which would also have meant that they were wrong about Jesus and wrong about God. In addition, Luke may have seen some significance in the fact that Stephen declared that Jesus was standing in heaven rather than sitting. It is probable that Luke understood Jesus to be standing as a witness and advocate in Stephen’s defense. As Jesus had promised, “I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God” (Lk. 12:8). Stephen and Jesus then were serving as witnesses to the truth of one another’s words.
The response of the Sanhedrin was as quick as it was vitriolic. The Sanhedrin saw Stephen’s words as clear blasphemy and dealt with such behavior in what they felt was a biblically prescribed way (Lev. 24:14). There is some debate as to whether the Romans gave the Sanhedrin the right to execute capital punishment in certain cases of blaspheming the Temple or whether this was a somewhat illegal action, but either way, they covered their ears to symbolically stop their exposure to his blasphemy and took Stephen out it a hurry and began to stone him outside of the city.
As Stephen faced his last moments, something rather amazing happened. There was a long tradition in Judaism of Jews who were facing their own death for God to boldly denounce their persecutors in no uncertain terms and to declare that God would one day vindicate their death and strike down with great vengeance those who were killing them. Stephen would have been well aware of that and likely raised to do just that if he ever had to face his own death to uphold the honor of his God and truth. But none of that was evident here. Stephen had no interest in denouncing his persecutors or declaring their judgment in the hands of God. He had had entered into a group of believers that would share in the sufferings of their master. They knew that Christ had called them to share in his life and that meant to take up suffering willingly for the sake of others. Like Christ, Stephen asked that the sins of his killers not be held against them (cf. Lk .23:34).
There was one more important parallel between the death of Stephen and Jesus that we should take note of. As Stephen was taking his last breaths he asked that his Spirit be received. Jesus requested that God would receive his Spirit (Lk. 23:46), an act that would vindicate his own death but would not call for judgment on those who had killed him. Stephen also asked for vindication of this type, but rather than asking God the Father to receive his Spirit, Stephen prayed that Jesus would receive his Spirit. This is evidence that within a period as short as a few months, the early church was already understanding an equality between God the Father and God the Son.
As Stephen fell asleep (a standard Jewish figure of speech that simply meant “death” and should not be used to try to force some concept of “soul sleep” that was unknown to the Jewish people or the early Christians into the biblical framework), Luke records that Saul (later the apostle Paul) was there giving his approval to the affair, an act that would stay with him for the rest of his life (cf. Acts. 22:20). These Christians were not some mere nuisance in Saul’s eyes and he clearly did not take the same “wait and see” approach that his master Gamaliel had prescribed. Saul would show his zeal by wiping these blasphemers from the face of the earth. The early Christians could not be viewed as sincere but misled souls. They were claiming that they were eyewitness to Jesus’ resurrection, and ascension and exaltation to heaven. Saul believed that Jesus’ death on a cursed cross demonstrated clearly enough that he was not the Messiah. Saul believed that his mission from God was to go to house to house and destroy the church. He would soon find himself becoming a fulfillment of Gamaliel’s words (Acts 5:38-39) and would find that he was not fighting for God but against him.
Devotional Thought
Where is your heart at? Do you ensure to the best of your ability that your heart is soft to God’s word and willing to be pricked, motivated, convicted, and moved to action by it. Or do you find that your heart is often already set and rather unwilling to be truly moved by God’s word? Take some time today to truly meditate on that and be open to the truth.
54 When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
57 At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58 dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
59 While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.
1 And Saul approved of their killing him.
The Church Persecuted and Scattered
On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.
Dig Deeper
There are only a few times in my life where I could honestly say that I felt something deep down in my core that caused me to action. Oh, it’s easy to feel strongly about something and desire to act on it, but how many times have you ever really felt something so strongly that you felt compelled to act immediately and felt no other option than to act right at that moment? When you feel something that deeply, whether your reaction is a positive or negative emotion, you almost feel as if you have no choice but to act. When we feel something that deep down in our soul, we usually say that we just felt it in our heart. Our heart is the deepest part of the “real us.” It is the seat of our emotions and will that directs our actions. So when we are cut to the heart or moved in our hearts, that is serious stuff. That means that whatever happened has connected with the deepest and strongest part of our our will and caused us to take actions that demonstrate what our true will and desires are. When something connects with our hearts, though, it usually says more about our hearts and where they are at, quite frankly, than it does about that particular thing that has moved our hearts.
In the early chapters of Acts, Luke has been developing a theme which is easily lost in many modern English translations that has to do with the hearts of the people of Israel. In Acts 2, the apostle Peter gave a stirring sermon concerning the fact that the people of Jerusalem had rejected and put to death God’s Messiah. Peter declared that God had proven that Jesus was his Messiah by raising him from the dead and now it was up to them to act. In Acts 2:37, Luke tells us that the people were “pierced to their heart,” using a word for “pierced” that meant to prick in and cause great anguish. The people had been challenged and their hearts were moved. They quickly asked what they should do and when Peter responded that the proper response was to repent and be baptized they did so.
But later in chapter 5, Peter and the other apostles are brought in to answer to the Sanhedrin for their repeated efforts in continuing to preach the gospel of the crucified, resurrected, and glorified Messiah, Jesus. As Peter boldly declared that he would not stop his activities and that Jesus was indeed the Messiah that was sent to deliver Israel and the whole world, Luke tells us in 5:33 that the members of the Sanhedrin were “cut to the heart.” This is often rendered as “furious” or something similar in modern translations which is basically correctly, but loses the theme of words that Luke was carefully creating. The Sanhedrin heard Peter’s words, the same core message that pierced the men and women in chapter 2 to their hearts, and they were also moved in their hearts. But it wasn’t so much of a wound of anguish, but a cut of vexation. They were moved very deeply just as the people at Pentecost were and by the very same words, but their response was ultimately very different.
In this passage Luke has just concluded giving us a summary of Stephen’s speech to this group of religious leaders. His message consisted of much of the same content as Peter’s in the two previously mentioned examples. Israel had strayed from God’s plan and had rejected his Messiah. When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, says Luke, they were “furious.” But Luke uses the same word for “cut” (diaprio) that he used in 5:33 and the same word for heart (kardio) that he had used in 2:37. Once again, the religious leaders of Israel had heard the message of the gospel and it had moved them in their hearts. But it had not moved them to humility and repentance as it had some. It moved them to anger and violence. How could the same message have such a different outcome in the hearts of the people?
What it really boils down to is not the message. That was the same. What Luke was showing us was the content of the heart. That’s what determines how it is effected. This is contrary to what most people nowadays think. We tend to believe that people are basically the same and are effected by their environments and what goes on around them, but Luke is showing us differently. People that lived in the same place and time, hearing the same message, were moved quite differently in their hearts because their hearts were different. Just as the same sunbeam can harden mud into brick or melt chocolate into goo based on the unique make-up of each item, so hearts that were sincerely humble to God were pricked to repentance by the message of the gospel. But those who had hardened themselves to God and desired their own gratification, well those hearts reacted quite explosively to the message of the early Christians.
The hearts of the Sanhedrin leaders had already turned against the possibility of Jesus being the Messiah, so Stephen’s words aroused rage, not humility. His words brought out the rebellion and rage that was already entrenched in their hearts. But Stephen’s reaction stood in stark opposition. Perhaps he was there during the events of Acts 2 and watched as many had their hearts pierced with the truth of the gospel. It is clear, though, that his heart was filled with the Holy Spirit rather than his own will. As he looked up, he saw the realm of heaven breaking into the present reality as though a curtain was being pulled back to reveal what is always there but can’t be seen.
His statement that he could see into heaven would have been significant and even more offensive to the Jewish leaders on two grounds. The first was that the standard Jewish belief was that the Temple was the place where God’s realm of heaven broke into the present physical age. This was further evidence that Stephen and the early church were claiming the place of God’s Temple over and above the physical structure of the Temple. The second was that it had not been very long since Jesus stood before this same Sanhedrin and declared that they would “see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mk. 14:62). Stephen was now standing in the same place, making the same claim for Jesus, and verifying that he was right, which would also have meant that they were wrong about Jesus and wrong about God. In addition, Luke may have seen some significance in the fact that Stephen declared that Jesus was standing in heaven rather than sitting. It is probable that Luke understood Jesus to be standing as a witness and advocate in Stephen’s defense. As Jesus had promised, “I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God” (Lk. 12:8). Stephen and Jesus then were serving as witnesses to the truth of one another’s words.
The response of the Sanhedrin was as quick as it was vitriolic. The Sanhedrin saw Stephen’s words as clear blasphemy and dealt with such behavior in what they felt was a biblically prescribed way (Lev. 24:14). There is some debate as to whether the Romans gave the Sanhedrin the right to execute capital punishment in certain cases of blaspheming the Temple or whether this was a somewhat illegal action, but either way, they covered their ears to symbolically stop their exposure to his blasphemy and took Stephen out it a hurry and began to stone him outside of the city.
As Stephen faced his last moments, something rather amazing happened. There was a long tradition in Judaism of Jews who were facing their own death for God to boldly denounce their persecutors in no uncertain terms and to declare that God would one day vindicate their death and strike down with great vengeance those who were killing them. Stephen would have been well aware of that and likely raised to do just that if he ever had to face his own death to uphold the honor of his God and truth. But none of that was evident here. Stephen had no interest in denouncing his persecutors or declaring their judgment in the hands of God. He had had entered into a group of believers that would share in the sufferings of their master. They knew that Christ had called them to share in his life and that meant to take up suffering willingly for the sake of others. Like Christ, Stephen asked that the sins of his killers not be held against them (cf. Lk .23:34).
There was one more important parallel between the death of Stephen and Jesus that we should take note of. As Stephen was taking his last breaths he asked that his Spirit be received. Jesus requested that God would receive his Spirit (Lk. 23:46), an act that would vindicate his own death but would not call for judgment on those who had killed him. Stephen also asked for vindication of this type, but rather than asking God the Father to receive his Spirit, Stephen prayed that Jesus would receive his Spirit. This is evidence that within a period as short as a few months, the early church was already understanding an equality between God the Father and God the Son.
As Stephen fell asleep (a standard Jewish figure of speech that simply meant “death” and should not be used to try to force some concept of “soul sleep” that was unknown to the Jewish people or the early Christians into the biblical framework), Luke records that Saul (later the apostle Paul) was there giving his approval to the affair, an act that would stay with him for the rest of his life (cf. Acts. 22:20). These Christians were not some mere nuisance in Saul’s eyes and he clearly did not take the same “wait and see” approach that his master Gamaliel had prescribed. Saul would show his zeal by wiping these blasphemers from the face of the earth. The early Christians could not be viewed as sincere but misled souls. They were claiming that they were eyewitness to Jesus’ resurrection, and ascension and exaltation to heaven. Saul believed that Jesus’ death on a cursed cross demonstrated clearly enough that he was not the Messiah. Saul believed that his mission from God was to go to house to house and destroy the church. He would soon find himself becoming a fulfillment of Gamaliel’s words (Acts 5:38-39) and would find that he was not fighting for God but against him.
Devotional Thought
Where is your heart at? Do you ensure to the best of your ability that your heart is soft to God’s word and willing to be pricked, motivated, convicted, and moved to action by it. Or do you find that your heart is often already set and rather unwilling to be truly moved by God’s word? Take some time today to truly meditate on that and be open to the truth.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Acts 7:35-53
35 “This is the same Moses they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36 He led them out of Egypt and performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the wilderness.
37 “This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people.’[h] 38 He was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living words to pass on to us.
39 “But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’[i] 41 That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in what their own hands had made. 42 But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon and stars. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets:
“‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?
43 You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek
and the star of your god Rephan,
the idols you made to worship.
Therefore I will send you into exile’[j] beyond Babylon.
44 “Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the covenant law with them in the wilderness. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. 45 After receiving the tabernacle, our ancestors under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained in the land until the time of David, 46 who enjoyed God’s favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.[k] 47 But it was Solomon who built a house for him.
48 “However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:
49 “‘Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me?
says the Lord.
Or where will my resting place be?
50 Has not my hand made all these things?’[l]
51 “You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! 52 Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him— 53 you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.”
Dig Deeper
One of the great subtle differences that appear throughout the Scriptures is the difference between building with bricks or stones. It’s an easy detail to miss because there’s really not a big difference in our day and age but that wasn’t so in biblical times. Stones were a natural building material. They were something that was crafted by God, so to speak. They were heavy, strong, and would last forever. They were already formed and so they had to be formed and shaped into place, and could often be built on top of one another without any mortar at all. Bricks on the other hand were completely made by human hands. They had to be produced and fired by humans rather than being formed by God. They were lighter and easier to work with and could be mass produced. But it also meant that they had to be held together with mortar which meant that anything built of bricks would just not last as long as something built of stone.
In fact, if you look throughout the Bible, virtually anything of any spiritual importance like an altar to God or the Temple in Jerusalem were built out of stone. They would be made with the material that was heavier and harder to work with but that could last forever (the pyramids in Egypt, for instance, were built of stone). Things made of brick don’t really receive particularly positive attention in the Bible. In fact, as the people at the Tower of Babel decided to turn away from God and exalt themselves, the author of Genesis gives the specific detail that they decided to build the Tower with brick and mortar rather than the more difficult stone. One could say that mentioning whether something was built of stone or bricks became something of a literary symbol in the ancient biblical world . This detail of making the Tower with brick would have signified in the mind of an ancient reader that they were both turning away from God by using brick rather than stone and that what they were building would not last very long.
This is a bit of a switch for us who live in a time and culture where something that is hand made is usually considered to be of higher quality, but in the biblical world making something by hand wasn’t necessarily a good image. It often carried the connotation that it wasn’t made by God. That was one of the key points about false idols that is made repeatedly in the Scriptures; they were made by hand and thus inferior (Ex. 32:4; Deut. 4:28; Jud. 17:5; 1 Ki. 12:28; 14:9; 2 Ki. 17:29; 22:17; 1 Chron. 16:26; 2 Chron. 13:8; 33:7; 34:25; Ps. 96:5; Jer. 1:16; 2:28; 25:6; 44:8; Hos. 14:3; Acts 19:26; Heb. 9:24). This concept is at the heart of what Stephen brought out here for the Jewish religious leaders. Were they going to follow and be part of a Temple built by God or one that was built by human hands?
As Stephen continued to tell the story of Israel, focusing on Moses for a good part of that account, he reminded them that the people of Israel had rejected Moses as their leader sent by God. They questioned his authority and ability to act as a ruler, judge, or leader of God’s people. But the second time he returned, after experiencing God’s presence in the burning bush, they had no choice but to follow him. It wasn’t necessarily because they had changed or were willing to be led more than they had the first time, it was that through Moses, God had made the signs so clear that they virtually had to follow him. Certainly it would seem that in Stephen’s mind, he felt that the Jews had initially rejected Jesus but through the resurrection of Christ and the miraculous activities of the church that God had done precisely what he had during Moses’ time. He had given signs that were too incredible to ignore and was now giving them a second chance to follow his chosen leader.
After all, it was Moses himself who had predicted that God would one day do on an even greater scale what he was doing through him and for Israel. He would raise up a prophet (Deut. 18:15) that was like Moses but even greater than Moses. But the Jews, rather than truly embracing Moses’ words, chose to turn their hearts back to Egypt. They continued the pattern that would become quite common for Israel by embracing God’s prophet. Their first response was to immediately turn to Aaron and demand the crafting of idolatrous idols. From the very beginning of their formation as a free people on their way to the promised land, Israel continued to indulge in idolatry. They continually turned away from the true God and offered sacrifices to Molek (a god whom it was believed by adherents to have demanded the ultimate sign of devotion; child sacrifices) and Rephan, a god that was associated with Saturn.
What Stephen did was to quickly compact all of Israel’s history into a few quick examples. At virtually every turn the people of Israel spurned God, persecuted and rejected his prophets, and worshipped other false gods and idols frequently. What it all came down to was the simple fact that at every opportunity Israel missed what God was truly doing. They never fully embraced the way of life of God’s people to which they were called. They constantly gave into idolatry and their own desires rather than God’s will.
The tabernacle was built and remained in Israel until the time of David, continued Stephen, but then David became bothered by the fact that he had a better and more permanent house than did the Lord Almighty. But it would not be David’s role to build a permanent Temple. That would go to his son Solomon, who even when he was constructing the Temple, noted that this was not God’s permanent desire. The structure of the Temple would serve a purpose, but Solomon understood that the whole world was the dwelling place of God’s presence. God could not truly be limited to a building, as grand as the Temple was, the way that false gods could be confined to their little shrines and temples.
Stephen finished off his explosive look at Israel’s history by quoting from Isaiah 66:1-2: “‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?’ declares the LORD.” It was not that the Temple was bad in itself but it was never God’s permanent plan. It was the boat that got them across the sea and now it was time to get out of the boat and go on land, not to curse the land and sit on the boat. God had revealed his new dwelling place, his Temple, as the person of Jesus Christ and when individuals died to their own individual identities and entered into the body of Christ, they became both corporately (1 Cor. 3:16) and individually (1 Cor. 6:19), the dwelling place of God’s presence. God’s reign would not be forever confined to one structure that was built by human hands. The only proper place for the fullness of God’s presence was the entire earth that was made by his hands, so to speak. In other words, it was always God’s plan to fill his own promised family with his presence. The Jews thought that the Temple was the final house of God rather than an important step along the way.
After quoting from Isaiah 66, there was little else that Stephen could or needed to say. It’s not hard to imagine that the tempers of those listening to him were at their boiling point by this time. He quickly and unapologetically brought his point home in a crystal clear fashion, just in case they had failed to follow his insinuations. It wasn’t just Israel in the past that was stiff-nicked, hard-hearted, and closed to God’s will. It wasn’t just Israel in the past that had persecuted and killed the prophets and those that spoke of the fulfillment of God’s plans in the promised Messiah. They had become part of that same sad legacy. They were the stiff-necked and hard-hearted. Jesus was the Righteous One. And they had betrayed and murdered him just as their ancestors had done to those who promised his coming.
Had Stephen blasphemed the Law of Moses and God himself as they had charged? No, said Stephen throughout this speech. It was the Jewish leaders who defamed the Law of Moses by not obeying it. It was they who blasphemed God by murdering the one that he had always promised. It was they who were rejecting the reality of God’s kingdom for the mere shadow of it. After being threatened by the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:29, Peter and the other disciples did not pray for deliverance but for God to “consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” Stephen’s words here were a continuing answer to that prayer. He had faced their threats with great boldness. He had held fast to God’s will and the truth of his Messiah. And in doing so, he signed his own death warrant. It has been said that if you having nothing to die for, you have nothing to truly live for. Perhaps it is time for God’s people to pray for boldness once again and preach the truth in our own day as straightforwardly and unapologetically as Stephen did.
Devotional Thought
What do you do when faced with opposition or persecution from sharing the truth of the gospel? Do you pray for and look for deliverance or do you pray for and act in boldness? How does Stephen’s example here inspire you in your own life?
37 “This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people.’[h] 38 He was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living words to pass on to us.
39 “But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’[i] 41 That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in what their own hands had made. 42 But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon and stars. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets:
“‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings
forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel?
43 You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek
and the star of your god Rephan,
the idols you made to worship.
Therefore I will send you into exile’[j] beyond Babylon.
44 “Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the covenant law with them in the wilderness. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. 45 After receiving the tabernacle, our ancestors under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained in the land until the time of David, 46 who enjoyed God’s favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.[k] 47 But it was Solomon who built a house for him.
48 “However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:
49 “‘Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me?
says the Lord.
Or where will my resting place be?
50 Has not my hand made all these things?’[l]
51 “You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! 52 Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him— 53 you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.”
Dig Deeper
One of the great subtle differences that appear throughout the Scriptures is the difference between building with bricks or stones. It’s an easy detail to miss because there’s really not a big difference in our day and age but that wasn’t so in biblical times. Stones were a natural building material. They were something that was crafted by God, so to speak. They were heavy, strong, and would last forever. They were already formed and so they had to be formed and shaped into place, and could often be built on top of one another without any mortar at all. Bricks on the other hand were completely made by human hands. They had to be produced and fired by humans rather than being formed by God. They were lighter and easier to work with and could be mass produced. But it also meant that they had to be held together with mortar which meant that anything built of bricks would just not last as long as something built of stone.
In fact, if you look throughout the Bible, virtually anything of any spiritual importance like an altar to God or the Temple in Jerusalem were built out of stone. They would be made with the material that was heavier and harder to work with but that could last forever (the pyramids in Egypt, for instance, were built of stone). Things made of brick don’t really receive particularly positive attention in the Bible. In fact, as the people at the Tower of Babel decided to turn away from God and exalt themselves, the author of Genesis gives the specific detail that they decided to build the Tower with brick and mortar rather than the more difficult stone. One could say that mentioning whether something was built of stone or bricks became something of a literary symbol in the ancient biblical world . This detail of making the Tower with brick would have signified in the mind of an ancient reader that they were both turning away from God by using brick rather than stone and that what they were building would not last very long.
This is a bit of a switch for us who live in a time and culture where something that is hand made is usually considered to be of higher quality, but in the biblical world making something by hand wasn’t necessarily a good image. It often carried the connotation that it wasn’t made by God. That was one of the key points about false idols that is made repeatedly in the Scriptures; they were made by hand and thus inferior (Ex. 32:4; Deut. 4:28; Jud. 17:5; 1 Ki. 12:28; 14:9; 2 Ki. 17:29; 22:17; 1 Chron. 16:26; 2 Chron. 13:8; 33:7; 34:25; Ps. 96:5; Jer. 1:16; 2:28; 25:6; 44:8; Hos. 14:3; Acts 19:26; Heb. 9:24). This concept is at the heart of what Stephen brought out here for the Jewish religious leaders. Were they going to follow and be part of a Temple built by God or one that was built by human hands?
As Stephen continued to tell the story of Israel, focusing on Moses for a good part of that account, he reminded them that the people of Israel had rejected Moses as their leader sent by God. They questioned his authority and ability to act as a ruler, judge, or leader of God’s people. But the second time he returned, after experiencing God’s presence in the burning bush, they had no choice but to follow him. It wasn’t necessarily because they had changed or were willing to be led more than they had the first time, it was that through Moses, God had made the signs so clear that they virtually had to follow him. Certainly it would seem that in Stephen’s mind, he felt that the Jews had initially rejected Jesus but through the resurrection of Christ and the miraculous activities of the church that God had done precisely what he had during Moses’ time. He had given signs that were too incredible to ignore and was now giving them a second chance to follow his chosen leader.
After all, it was Moses himself who had predicted that God would one day do on an even greater scale what he was doing through him and for Israel. He would raise up a prophet (Deut. 18:15) that was like Moses but even greater than Moses. But the Jews, rather than truly embracing Moses’ words, chose to turn their hearts back to Egypt. They continued the pattern that would become quite common for Israel by embracing God’s prophet. Their first response was to immediately turn to Aaron and demand the crafting of idolatrous idols. From the very beginning of their formation as a free people on their way to the promised land, Israel continued to indulge in idolatry. They continually turned away from the true God and offered sacrifices to Molek (a god whom it was believed by adherents to have demanded the ultimate sign of devotion; child sacrifices) and Rephan, a god that was associated with Saturn.
What Stephen did was to quickly compact all of Israel’s history into a few quick examples. At virtually every turn the people of Israel spurned God, persecuted and rejected his prophets, and worshipped other false gods and idols frequently. What it all came down to was the simple fact that at every opportunity Israel missed what God was truly doing. They never fully embraced the way of life of God’s people to which they were called. They constantly gave into idolatry and their own desires rather than God’s will.
The tabernacle was built and remained in Israel until the time of David, continued Stephen, but then David became bothered by the fact that he had a better and more permanent house than did the Lord Almighty. But it would not be David’s role to build a permanent Temple. That would go to his son Solomon, who even when he was constructing the Temple, noted that this was not God’s permanent desire. The structure of the Temple would serve a purpose, but Solomon understood that the whole world was the dwelling place of God’s presence. God could not truly be limited to a building, as grand as the Temple was, the way that false gods could be confined to their little shrines and temples.
Stephen finished off his explosive look at Israel’s history by quoting from Isaiah 66:1-2: “‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?’ declares the LORD.” It was not that the Temple was bad in itself but it was never God’s permanent plan. It was the boat that got them across the sea and now it was time to get out of the boat and go on land, not to curse the land and sit on the boat. God had revealed his new dwelling place, his Temple, as the person of Jesus Christ and when individuals died to their own individual identities and entered into the body of Christ, they became both corporately (1 Cor. 3:16) and individually (1 Cor. 6:19), the dwelling place of God’s presence. God’s reign would not be forever confined to one structure that was built by human hands. The only proper place for the fullness of God’s presence was the entire earth that was made by his hands, so to speak. In other words, it was always God’s plan to fill his own promised family with his presence. The Jews thought that the Temple was the final house of God rather than an important step along the way.
After quoting from Isaiah 66, there was little else that Stephen could or needed to say. It’s not hard to imagine that the tempers of those listening to him were at their boiling point by this time. He quickly and unapologetically brought his point home in a crystal clear fashion, just in case they had failed to follow his insinuations. It wasn’t just Israel in the past that was stiff-nicked, hard-hearted, and closed to God’s will. It wasn’t just Israel in the past that had persecuted and killed the prophets and those that spoke of the fulfillment of God’s plans in the promised Messiah. They had become part of that same sad legacy. They were the stiff-necked and hard-hearted. Jesus was the Righteous One. And they had betrayed and murdered him just as their ancestors had done to those who promised his coming.
Had Stephen blasphemed the Law of Moses and God himself as they had charged? No, said Stephen throughout this speech. It was the Jewish leaders who defamed the Law of Moses by not obeying it. It was they who blasphemed God by murdering the one that he had always promised. It was they who were rejecting the reality of God’s kingdom for the mere shadow of it. After being threatened by the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:29, Peter and the other disciples did not pray for deliverance but for God to “consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” Stephen’s words here were a continuing answer to that prayer. He had faced their threats with great boldness. He had held fast to God’s will and the truth of his Messiah. And in doing so, he signed his own death warrant. It has been said that if you having nothing to die for, you have nothing to truly live for. Perhaps it is time for God’s people to pray for boldness once again and preach the truth in our own day as straightforwardly and unapologetically as Stephen did.
Devotional Thought
What do you do when faced with opposition or persecution from sharing the truth of the gospel? Do you pray for and look for deliverance or do you pray for and act in boldness? How does Stephen’s example here inspire you in your own life?
Friday, January 07, 2011
Acts 7:17-34
17 “As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt had greatly increased. 18 Then ‘a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.’[c] 19 He dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our ancestors by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die.
20 “At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child.[d] For three months he was cared for by his family. 21 When he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. 22 Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.
23 “When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25 Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. 26 The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’
27 “But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28 Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’[e] 29 When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.
30 “After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31 When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to get a closer look, he heard the Lord say: 32 ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’[f] Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.
33 “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’[g]
Dig Deeper
One of the great games that seem to be played almost annually by politicians is when each party tries to connect themselves in people’s minds with a great political leader of the past. They try to give the impression that they are the ones holding to the beliefs and legacy of that great leader and will be just as great if only given the chance. So every year, one politician tries to paint himself as the next Abraham Lincoln while another likens himself to Franklin Delano Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, while still another claims to be the legacy holder of Ronald Reagan. Each politician tries to craft a narrative to show that they are in keeping with the beliefs and character of that great leader and will carry on their legacy to the next generation. It is even more interesting when two politicians who are running against each other both try to claim the legacy of the same politician. Each attempts to connect themselves with history while showing that their opponent is really an imposter and is not holding to the legacy of that great leader in the past. It usually becomes clear that one actually makes a decent case to show that they carry on the ideals of the political leader from the past while the other one is really not close other than their desire to use the name of that person to further their own agenda.
What Stephen is doing by re-telling the story of Israel, and focusing in on Moses in particular in this section, is not nearly as self-serving and crass as most politicians tend to be when they employ such techniques. Stephen isn’t simply talking about Moses to claim that Jesus and his band of followers are just like Moses or picking up with the same sort of legacy that Moses had. He’s certainly not claiming that Jesus’ disciples are truly the ones that were really following the law while all others were diminishing or blaspheming the law (a position that would have been rather common among the Pharisees and other Jewish groups of the day). Stephen’s point was much bigger yet more subtle than that. It wasn’t that they were trying to resurrect the legacy and memories of Moses and identify themselves with the reverence that people had for him and other important Jewish figures from the past simply to legitimize themselves.
Stephen was telling the story of Israel, the common story of both Jews and Christian Jews, as the story of God’s people. But as he was re-telling it, he was making sure that his listeners could follow the very clear signposts along the way. The Jewish leaders would have argued that they were the ones who were continuing on in the story and tradition of being the people of Moses, Joseph, and Abraham. They were the ones that were writing the next chapter of being God’s people. But Stephen was deftly telling the story of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses to demonstrate that that wasn’t the case at all. God had a history of raising up a man to lead his people and the constant pattern of the Jewish people was to reject that man and fight against God’s purposes. That was the story between God and his people. It wasn’t a long and illustrious story of a small band of faithful followers who adhered to God’s laws and will wherever they went, overcoming great obstacles to do so. It was a long story of God’s people being rebellious against God; of fighting against God’s purposes and persecuting the very men that God sent to set them straight. That was the story that Stephen was telling and it was the true story. It was the very same story, that had continued right on through the crucifixion of Jesus and the persecutions that were just beginning for Jesus’ followers, the true people of God.
As Stephen told the story of Israel, he moved very quickly from Abraham to Moses with just brief mention of the fact that the descendants of Abraham and Joseph had found themselves in the foreign land of Egypt. There came a time, as the Israelites continued to increase, that a new king rose up who either did not care about the history of Joseph saving Egypt or he truly did not know. Either way, every Jew listening to Stephen would have known the dilemma for God’s people at that time, without him having to directly state it. They were trapped in slavery in Egypt. God’s people needed to be rescued, so God raised up a deliverer.
That may seem like a small point, but it was not. Moses did not simply rise to prominence by circumstance or mere happenstance. He was no ordinary child but was chosen by God for his purposes from the very beginning. This doesn’t mean that Moses had no free will or choice in the matter, but it does mean that this was the vocation that God had chosen for Moses and as Moses submitted himself to God’s will, it was God who raised him up. It was God who saw that he was not drowned when placed in the Nile but who made his way to Pharaoh’s household and who was educated in all of the wisdom of the Egyptians and who was powerful in speech and action (despite his meager protests to God in Ex. 4:10, claiming that he was not at all those things).
Moses saw that his people were trapped in slavery with no way of escaping. He had been called by God to deliver them and end their mistreatment. He thought, declared Stephen, that the Israelites were waiting for God to act and would embrace him as God’s chosen deliverer. But that’s not how it went at all. Rather than recognizing what God was doing through Moses they were blind to God’s purposes. They claimed to be waiting for God to rescue them but could not discern when he actually had. When Moses rose up to the aid of an Israelite, the other Israelites still could not see that he was their divinely sent path to freedom. They rejected him and, fearing that they would turn him in, Moses fled to Midian.
During his forty years in the area of Midian, God came to Moses once again to call him as the presence of Yahweh himself appeared in a bush. The consuming fire of God’s presence filled the bush but did not consume which affirmed for Moses that this was indeed the Lord. Those feelings from so long ago that God had raised him up to rescue his people were not wrong. God had chosen him to be the one to lead God’s people from slavery.
He would be the deliverer. Although they had been in Egypt for over four hundred years, God had not forgotten his promises to his people. He would bring them out of slavery and he did have great plans for them. The Messiah would come through them one day and God’s promises to Abraham that his descendants would one day bring about the blessed family of all nations would realize its fulfillment. The one thing that God will not do is to leave his people in oppression and separated from him without any hope of being free and reconciling themselves to God.
Let’s be straightforward here. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where Stephen was headed with all of this. He was hardly backing down and trying to show that he was one of them after all and that they were just misunderstanding the teachings of Jesus and his followers. That might have been the easier road to go down, the path to compromise always is. But that’s not where Stephen was headed. He did try to establish common ground but only to show that they truly could still see themselves as Israel, God’s people and arrive precisely where the followers of Jesus had. If they continued going down the road they were on, Stephen was warning them, they would look back very soon and find that they had taken a very dangerous wrong turn and were steaming towards the cliff of God’s wrath. It was the Christians, the people of the Messiah, that had stayed on the path of God’s story, and Jesus was that Messiah.
He was the one who, like Moses, was set apart and chosen for God’s purposes. He wasn’t a self-appointed Messiah-wanna-be. He was the one that had been chosen to free God’s people who were once again caught in slavery. But this time, the slavery that they were tangled in hopelessly was far more damaging and eternal than mere temporal slavery in the land of Egypt. They were caught in the slavery of sin which encapsulates all humans and separates them from God. But God had heard their cries, saw their oppression, and remembered his promises. He had sent one like Moses, but greater than Moses (Deut. 18:15-18), to free his people from their ultimate slavery. As he continues on in the next section, Stephen will make it crystal clear that he was not softening his point to escape persecution from the Jewish leadership. God had raised up a deliverer but the Jewish people had done what they had so often done before and what they had done to Moses. They had rejected him. They were still part of God’s story but the next chapter was up to them. Would they embrace the deliverer or reject him once-and-for-all.
And just when we are tempted to turn away from such a long passage as this in boredom or in thinking that it doesn’t have much in there for us, we must stop and realize that the story Stephen was telling was not just for the ancient Israelites with no meaning for us today. This story is for us as well. We have to make the same decision that they made and choose whether to embrace the deliverer and number ourselves among God’s family for all eternity or reject him and continue down our own path. The choice is ours to make. But we should also never forget that once we have made the decision and embraced our deliverer, the story is then ours to tell to those around us just as boldly and creatively as Stephen did.
Devotional Thought
Are you prepared to tell the story of God’s people an deliverance in your own so that it will connect with those around, whether they listen or fail to listen, as Stephen was in his day and time? If you’re not, what can you do to get prepared?
20 “At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child.[d] For three months he was cared for by his family. 21 When he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. 22 Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.
23 “When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25 Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. 26 The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’
27 “But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28 Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’[e] 29 When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.
30 “After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31 When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to get a closer look, he heard the Lord say: 32 ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’[f] Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.
33 “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’[g]
Dig Deeper
One of the great games that seem to be played almost annually by politicians is when each party tries to connect themselves in people’s minds with a great political leader of the past. They try to give the impression that they are the ones holding to the beliefs and legacy of that great leader and will be just as great if only given the chance. So every year, one politician tries to paint himself as the next Abraham Lincoln while another likens himself to Franklin Delano Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, while still another claims to be the legacy holder of Ronald Reagan. Each politician tries to craft a narrative to show that they are in keeping with the beliefs and character of that great leader and will carry on their legacy to the next generation. It is even more interesting when two politicians who are running against each other both try to claim the legacy of the same politician. Each attempts to connect themselves with history while showing that their opponent is really an imposter and is not holding to the legacy of that great leader in the past. It usually becomes clear that one actually makes a decent case to show that they carry on the ideals of the political leader from the past while the other one is really not close other than their desire to use the name of that person to further their own agenda.
What Stephen is doing by re-telling the story of Israel, and focusing in on Moses in particular in this section, is not nearly as self-serving and crass as most politicians tend to be when they employ such techniques. Stephen isn’t simply talking about Moses to claim that Jesus and his band of followers are just like Moses or picking up with the same sort of legacy that Moses had. He’s certainly not claiming that Jesus’ disciples are truly the ones that were really following the law while all others were diminishing or blaspheming the law (a position that would have been rather common among the Pharisees and other Jewish groups of the day). Stephen’s point was much bigger yet more subtle than that. It wasn’t that they were trying to resurrect the legacy and memories of Moses and identify themselves with the reverence that people had for him and other important Jewish figures from the past simply to legitimize themselves.
Stephen was telling the story of Israel, the common story of both Jews and Christian Jews, as the story of God’s people. But as he was re-telling it, he was making sure that his listeners could follow the very clear signposts along the way. The Jewish leaders would have argued that they were the ones who were continuing on in the story and tradition of being the people of Moses, Joseph, and Abraham. They were the ones that were writing the next chapter of being God’s people. But Stephen was deftly telling the story of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses to demonstrate that that wasn’t the case at all. God had a history of raising up a man to lead his people and the constant pattern of the Jewish people was to reject that man and fight against God’s purposes. That was the story between God and his people. It wasn’t a long and illustrious story of a small band of faithful followers who adhered to God’s laws and will wherever they went, overcoming great obstacles to do so. It was a long story of God’s people being rebellious against God; of fighting against God’s purposes and persecuting the very men that God sent to set them straight. That was the story that Stephen was telling and it was the true story. It was the very same story, that had continued right on through the crucifixion of Jesus and the persecutions that were just beginning for Jesus’ followers, the true people of God.
As Stephen told the story of Israel, he moved very quickly from Abraham to Moses with just brief mention of the fact that the descendants of Abraham and Joseph had found themselves in the foreign land of Egypt. There came a time, as the Israelites continued to increase, that a new king rose up who either did not care about the history of Joseph saving Egypt or he truly did not know. Either way, every Jew listening to Stephen would have known the dilemma for God’s people at that time, without him having to directly state it. They were trapped in slavery in Egypt. God’s people needed to be rescued, so God raised up a deliverer.
That may seem like a small point, but it was not. Moses did not simply rise to prominence by circumstance or mere happenstance. He was no ordinary child but was chosen by God for his purposes from the very beginning. This doesn’t mean that Moses had no free will or choice in the matter, but it does mean that this was the vocation that God had chosen for Moses and as Moses submitted himself to God’s will, it was God who raised him up. It was God who saw that he was not drowned when placed in the Nile but who made his way to Pharaoh’s household and who was educated in all of the wisdom of the Egyptians and who was powerful in speech and action (despite his meager protests to God in Ex. 4:10, claiming that he was not at all those things).
Moses saw that his people were trapped in slavery with no way of escaping. He had been called by God to deliver them and end their mistreatment. He thought, declared Stephen, that the Israelites were waiting for God to act and would embrace him as God’s chosen deliverer. But that’s not how it went at all. Rather than recognizing what God was doing through Moses they were blind to God’s purposes. They claimed to be waiting for God to rescue them but could not discern when he actually had. When Moses rose up to the aid of an Israelite, the other Israelites still could not see that he was their divinely sent path to freedom. They rejected him and, fearing that they would turn him in, Moses fled to Midian.
During his forty years in the area of Midian, God came to Moses once again to call him as the presence of Yahweh himself appeared in a bush. The consuming fire of God’s presence filled the bush but did not consume which affirmed for Moses that this was indeed the Lord. Those feelings from so long ago that God had raised him up to rescue his people were not wrong. God had chosen him to be the one to lead God’s people from slavery.
He would be the deliverer. Although they had been in Egypt for over four hundred years, God had not forgotten his promises to his people. He would bring them out of slavery and he did have great plans for them. The Messiah would come through them one day and God’s promises to Abraham that his descendants would one day bring about the blessed family of all nations would realize its fulfillment. The one thing that God will not do is to leave his people in oppression and separated from him without any hope of being free and reconciling themselves to God.
Let’s be straightforward here. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where Stephen was headed with all of this. He was hardly backing down and trying to show that he was one of them after all and that they were just misunderstanding the teachings of Jesus and his followers. That might have been the easier road to go down, the path to compromise always is. But that’s not where Stephen was headed. He did try to establish common ground but only to show that they truly could still see themselves as Israel, God’s people and arrive precisely where the followers of Jesus had. If they continued going down the road they were on, Stephen was warning them, they would look back very soon and find that they had taken a very dangerous wrong turn and were steaming towards the cliff of God’s wrath. It was the Christians, the people of the Messiah, that had stayed on the path of God’s story, and Jesus was that Messiah.
He was the one who, like Moses, was set apart and chosen for God’s purposes. He wasn’t a self-appointed Messiah-wanna-be. He was the one that had been chosen to free God’s people who were once again caught in slavery. But this time, the slavery that they were tangled in hopelessly was far more damaging and eternal than mere temporal slavery in the land of Egypt. They were caught in the slavery of sin which encapsulates all humans and separates them from God. But God had heard their cries, saw their oppression, and remembered his promises. He had sent one like Moses, but greater than Moses (Deut. 18:15-18), to free his people from their ultimate slavery. As he continues on in the next section, Stephen will make it crystal clear that he was not softening his point to escape persecution from the Jewish leadership. God had raised up a deliverer but the Jewish people had done what they had so often done before and what they had done to Moses. They had rejected him. They were still part of God’s story but the next chapter was up to them. Would they embrace the deliverer or reject him once-and-for-all.
And just when we are tempted to turn away from such a long passage as this in boredom or in thinking that it doesn’t have much in there for us, we must stop and realize that the story Stephen was telling was not just for the ancient Israelites with no meaning for us today. This story is for us as well. We have to make the same decision that they made and choose whether to embrace the deliverer and number ourselves among God’s family for all eternity or reject him and continue down our own path. The choice is ours to make. But we should also never forget that once we have made the decision and embraced our deliverer, the story is then ours to tell to those around us just as boldly and creatively as Stephen did.
Devotional Thought
Are you prepared to tell the story of God’s people an deliverance in your own so that it will connect with those around, whether they listen or fail to listen, as Stephen was in his day and time? If you’re not, what can you do to get prepared?
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Acts 7:1-16
Stephen’s Speech to the Sanhedrin
1 Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are these charges true?”
2 To this he replied: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran. 3 ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’[a]
4 “So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Harran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. 5 He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. 6 God spoke to him in this way: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. 7 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.’[b] 8 Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.
9 “Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him 10 and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt. So Pharaoh made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace.
11 “Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our ancestors could not find food. 12 When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our forefathers on their first visit. 13 On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph’s family. 14 After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all. 15 Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our ancestors died. 16 Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money.
Dig Deeper
The other day I happened along a television commentator who was defending himself against charges that he disliked American poor people and did not care about their struggles because he opposed the new health care initiative of the President of the United States and he was also opposing a proposal in Congress that the United States government would once again extend unemployment benefits well beyond the usual time period because of the economic recession in which the US currently finds itself. Without making comment personally on any of those issues, I found his response interesting to those charges. Did he oppose the health care bill and the unemployment extension? Did he hate average Americans? In his estimation those charges, while somewhat based in truth still had to be qualified as false charges because of the interpretation given to his positions. In his response to these “false” charges, the commentator did not just simply state his position against these two government programs. Instead he told a story that, on the surface, appeared to have little to do with the questions on his current positions. He told a story about the founding of the United States of America. He crafted his story of America in such a way as to stress certain aspects of America’s story that connected it to what he wanted to say. The story that he told, if you were paying close attention, demonstrated an America that was built to give freedom from outside intervention to every human being. It would be their lot as Americans to succeed or fail on their own with no handicaps but no helps either. His point soon became clear. His America was one that created the environment for every American to make it through life by their own two hands with no government interference or support. That’s why he opposed these two ideas. They simply did not match up with his story of America. And sometimes, you can only make the truth of your point known through a story.
In the previous passage Stephen was charged with opposing the Law of Moses and Israel’s God. It was being interpreted by the Jews who were opposing him as a disdain for Israel. So as we turn to this chapter, the question on the mind of the high priest, presumably Caiphas, was whether or not these charges were true. Did Stephen hate Israel, Israel’s Law, and God himself? Like the example above, Stephen felt that the charges against him were false because the interpretation of his position was incorrect. A simple answer would simply not explain his position. The only way for him to truly explain his position was to go back to the beginning and tell a story. Stephen would go back through Israel’s story and highlight certain events to show that he was not an enemy of Israel at all. He was, in fact, the one that was clinging to the ideals of the true story of Israel. He was continuing in that story and his opponents who were making serious charges against him were the ones that would find themselves on the wrong side of history if they would but go back and get the story right from the beginning.
From Stephen’s opening words, he makes it clear as he addresses his listeners as brothers and fathers, that he is not trying to be contentious. He is trying to build a camaraderie with them and find common ground while still declaring the truth. He continues to establish common ground as declared their common foundation as coming from the God of glory, a phrase that appears only in Psalm 29:3 in the Old Testament. He was not going to blaspheme God but uphold his glory as the one who is “enthroned as king forever.” (Ps. 29:10).
Stephen wanted it to be clear to his audience that he was not holding Israel in disdain. He was not denouncing the fact that God had called Israel to be his people, something that was a great point of contention between the Jews and Christians of the first century (The Jewish claim was that Christians were denouncing Israel as God’s people altogether, while the true Christian position was that God had indeed called Israel to be his true people, but that the status of “Israel” as God’s true Son had passed from the nation of Israel to Jesus and those who entered into the life of the Messiah). Rather, Stephen confirmed the fact that God had called Abraham for the special purpose of righting what had gone wrong in the world as a result of sin. As Stephen tells, the story, however, he does so by stressing themes that were not just important to Jews, but things that were vital parts of the gospel message as well. His story has everything to do with being called to be God’s people who would form the promised family and receive the inheritance of God’s people. He will also stress the fact that Israel had a long history of ignoring or mistreating those called by God to be guardians of the inheritance, which was a theme that would bear significant importance when it came time to specifically show the role of Jesus in God’s story.
The call to Abraham, from the very beginning, was to leave his people and family and go to a new land to be the beginning of a new family that God would form (a call that would have been rather familiar to those who were called to “hate” or reject the status of their blood family as their identity as God’s people and to embrace Jesus alone to bring them into God’s family as Jesus made clear in Lk. 14:25-27). Abraham obeyed God in faith and came into the promise that God had given him. When he arrived at the land that God had told him to go to, Abraham did not receive it. He was called to live in a land that was promised to him as his inheritance but which he did not really fully possess (a theme that would have struck a chord with Christians who were a people called to live the life of the age to come as their inheritance while still in the present age, meaning they were called to live in an inheritance that had been promised to them but that they will not fully possess until the resurrection). Abraham obeyed God by faith and lived as though God’s promises of a great family of all nations and the inheritance were his even though he could not see any of it and didn’t even have a son let alone a nation of his own descendants (again, the Christian would have heard echoes of their own call to live by faith in the life of Christ and the promise of the age to come even though they could not see it or take hold of it just yet, a topic that Paul discussed in great detail in Romans 4). God had given Abraham a sign of his covenant in circumcision, showing that he really had called them to be his people. It would be the uniform, so to speak, of their status as God’s people (just as the uniform for the Christian is faith in the life of Christ).
As we can see, Stephen masterfully spun this tale in such a way so as to affirm the story of Israel as God’s people, while at the same time bringing out certain themes to show that what God had been doing all along with Israel was now being fulfilled and brought to a head with the people of the Messiah.
As Stephen continues his tale, he was showing the Sanhedrin that he was not denying God’s calling of Abraham as the beginning of the story of God fixing what had gone so terribly wrong in the world, he was affirming it. It wasn’t that the story was all wrong, it was just that they were missing some important aspects of properly understanding it. The story that Stephen was telling of Israel was different from what he was being accused of but no less dangerous in its potential to incite the crowd to anger. He was wasn’t trying to soften the truth, he was clarifying it so that he could declare it even louder and clearer than he had done before.
As he moved into the time of Joseph, Stephen stressed that Joseph was the brother through whom God had chosen to work and through whom the promise would be preserved. Yet, Joseph was rejected by the rest of his brothers and sent packing to Egypt. Rather than this rejection showing that Joseph was not God’s chosen instrument, the truth revealed quite the opposite. God used Joseph to become the the de facto ruler of Egypt and over the palace of the Pharaoh. When the hard times of famine struck the land, the brothers had no choice. They went to the brother that they had rejected, a man that they did not even recognize as their own brother and they had to ask him for food. The one that they had rejected in jealousy and hatred was now the only one that could save them.
Again, Stephen’s point was to affirm their common heritage and identity but his more subtle point would likely have been clear as well, and if wasn’t it would soon become clear. The very roots of the nation of Israel involved the larger group rejecting the very one that they would be the source or their salvation. God had worked in such a way to bring events about so that they only way that they could be saved from certain death and continue to be God’s people was to humble themselves before the rejected one who had become the rightful ruler.
Stephen’s underlying point was that what God had done through Joseph was a pattern for what he was now doing through Jesus the Messiah. Jesus had been rejected by his own people, but now the one that had been rejected was the only one through whom they could find life and the continued status as God’s children. They must humble themselves before the very one that they had rejected.
Stephen isn’t done yet, but he has brilliantly laid the foundation for his big finish when he reveals that the story that they think he’s telling, a rather run-of-the-mill recounting of their common history, albeit one that stressed some very specific themes, has a very different ending then the one that his listeners would have imagined.
Devotional Thought
Stephen was willing to step up and speak boldly in some pretty intimidating circumstances. Are you just as willing to boldly proclaim God’s story to those around you even if it won’t be received well? What venue has God given you today to tell someone his story of what he is up to to make things right in the world?
1 Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are these charges true?”
2 To this he replied: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran. 3 ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’[a]
4 “So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Harran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. 5 He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. 6 God spoke to him in this way: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. 7 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.’[b] 8 Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.
9 “Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him 10 and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt. So Pharaoh made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace.
11 “Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our ancestors could not find food. 12 When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our forefathers on their first visit. 13 On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph’s family. 14 After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all. 15 Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our ancestors died. 16 Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money.
Dig Deeper
The other day I happened along a television commentator who was defending himself against charges that he disliked American poor people and did not care about their struggles because he opposed the new health care initiative of the President of the United States and he was also opposing a proposal in Congress that the United States government would once again extend unemployment benefits well beyond the usual time period because of the economic recession in which the US currently finds itself. Without making comment personally on any of those issues, I found his response interesting to those charges. Did he oppose the health care bill and the unemployment extension? Did he hate average Americans? In his estimation those charges, while somewhat based in truth still had to be qualified as false charges because of the interpretation given to his positions. In his response to these “false” charges, the commentator did not just simply state his position against these two government programs. Instead he told a story that, on the surface, appeared to have little to do with the questions on his current positions. He told a story about the founding of the United States of America. He crafted his story of America in such a way as to stress certain aspects of America’s story that connected it to what he wanted to say. The story that he told, if you were paying close attention, demonstrated an America that was built to give freedom from outside intervention to every human being. It would be their lot as Americans to succeed or fail on their own with no handicaps but no helps either. His point soon became clear. His America was one that created the environment for every American to make it through life by their own two hands with no government interference or support. That’s why he opposed these two ideas. They simply did not match up with his story of America. And sometimes, you can only make the truth of your point known through a story.
In the previous passage Stephen was charged with opposing the Law of Moses and Israel’s God. It was being interpreted by the Jews who were opposing him as a disdain for Israel. So as we turn to this chapter, the question on the mind of the high priest, presumably Caiphas, was whether or not these charges were true. Did Stephen hate Israel, Israel’s Law, and God himself? Like the example above, Stephen felt that the charges against him were false because the interpretation of his position was incorrect. A simple answer would simply not explain his position. The only way for him to truly explain his position was to go back to the beginning and tell a story. Stephen would go back through Israel’s story and highlight certain events to show that he was not an enemy of Israel at all. He was, in fact, the one that was clinging to the ideals of the true story of Israel. He was continuing in that story and his opponents who were making serious charges against him were the ones that would find themselves on the wrong side of history if they would but go back and get the story right from the beginning.
From Stephen’s opening words, he makes it clear as he addresses his listeners as brothers and fathers, that he is not trying to be contentious. He is trying to build a camaraderie with them and find common ground while still declaring the truth. He continues to establish common ground as declared their common foundation as coming from the God of glory, a phrase that appears only in Psalm 29:3 in the Old Testament. He was not going to blaspheme God but uphold his glory as the one who is “enthroned as king forever.” (Ps. 29:10).
Stephen wanted it to be clear to his audience that he was not holding Israel in disdain. He was not denouncing the fact that God had called Israel to be his people, something that was a great point of contention between the Jews and Christians of the first century (The Jewish claim was that Christians were denouncing Israel as God’s people altogether, while the true Christian position was that God had indeed called Israel to be his true people, but that the status of “Israel” as God’s true Son had passed from the nation of Israel to Jesus and those who entered into the life of the Messiah). Rather, Stephen confirmed the fact that God had called Abraham for the special purpose of righting what had gone wrong in the world as a result of sin. As Stephen tells, the story, however, he does so by stressing themes that were not just important to Jews, but things that were vital parts of the gospel message as well. His story has everything to do with being called to be God’s people who would form the promised family and receive the inheritance of God’s people. He will also stress the fact that Israel had a long history of ignoring or mistreating those called by God to be guardians of the inheritance, which was a theme that would bear significant importance when it came time to specifically show the role of Jesus in God’s story.
The call to Abraham, from the very beginning, was to leave his people and family and go to a new land to be the beginning of a new family that God would form (a call that would have been rather familiar to those who were called to “hate” or reject the status of their blood family as their identity as God’s people and to embrace Jesus alone to bring them into God’s family as Jesus made clear in Lk. 14:25-27). Abraham obeyed God in faith and came into the promise that God had given him. When he arrived at the land that God had told him to go to, Abraham did not receive it. He was called to live in a land that was promised to him as his inheritance but which he did not really fully possess (a theme that would have struck a chord with Christians who were a people called to live the life of the age to come as their inheritance while still in the present age, meaning they were called to live in an inheritance that had been promised to them but that they will not fully possess until the resurrection). Abraham obeyed God by faith and lived as though God’s promises of a great family of all nations and the inheritance were his even though he could not see any of it and didn’t even have a son let alone a nation of his own descendants (again, the Christian would have heard echoes of their own call to live by faith in the life of Christ and the promise of the age to come even though they could not see it or take hold of it just yet, a topic that Paul discussed in great detail in Romans 4). God had given Abraham a sign of his covenant in circumcision, showing that he really had called them to be his people. It would be the uniform, so to speak, of their status as God’s people (just as the uniform for the Christian is faith in the life of Christ).
As we can see, Stephen masterfully spun this tale in such a way so as to affirm the story of Israel as God’s people, while at the same time bringing out certain themes to show that what God had been doing all along with Israel was now being fulfilled and brought to a head with the people of the Messiah.
As Stephen continues his tale, he was showing the Sanhedrin that he was not denying God’s calling of Abraham as the beginning of the story of God fixing what had gone so terribly wrong in the world, he was affirming it. It wasn’t that the story was all wrong, it was just that they were missing some important aspects of properly understanding it. The story that Stephen was telling of Israel was different from what he was being accused of but no less dangerous in its potential to incite the crowd to anger. He was wasn’t trying to soften the truth, he was clarifying it so that he could declare it even louder and clearer than he had done before.
As he moved into the time of Joseph, Stephen stressed that Joseph was the brother through whom God had chosen to work and through whom the promise would be preserved. Yet, Joseph was rejected by the rest of his brothers and sent packing to Egypt. Rather than this rejection showing that Joseph was not God’s chosen instrument, the truth revealed quite the opposite. God used Joseph to become the the de facto ruler of Egypt and over the palace of the Pharaoh. When the hard times of famine struck the land, the brothers had no choice. They went to the brother that they had rejected, a man that they did not even recognize as their own brother and they had to ask him for food. The one that they had rejected in jealousy and hatred was now the only one that could save them.
Again, Stephen’s point was to affirm their common heritage and identity but his more subtle point would likely have been clear as well, and if wasn’t it would soon become clear. The very roots of the nation of Israel involved the larger group rejecting the very one that they would be the source or their salvation. God had worked in such a way to bring events about so that they only way that they could be saved from certain death and continue to be God’s people was to humble themselves before the rejected one who had become the rightful ruler.
Stephen’s underlying point was that what God had done through Joseph was a pattern for what he was now doing through Jesus the Messiah. Jesus had been rejected by his own people, but now the one that had been rejected was the only one through whom they could find life and the continued status as God’s children. They must humble themselves before the very one that they had rejected.
Stephen isn’t done yet, but he has brilliantly laid the foundation for his big finish when he reveals that the story that they think he’s telling, a rather run-of-the-mill recounting of their common history, albeit one that stressed some very specific themes, has a very different ending then the one that his listeners would have imagined.
Devotional Thought
Stephen was willing to step up and speak boldly in some pretty intimidating circumstances. Are you just as willing to boldly proclaim God’s story to those around you even if it won’t be received well? What venue has God given you today to tell someone his story of what he is up to to make things right in the world?
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