Monday, April 30, 2012

Hebrews 2:10-18


10 In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. 11 Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.[g] 12 He says,



   “I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters;

   in the assembly I will sing your praises.”[h]



 13 And again,



   “I will put my trust in him.”[i]



   And again he says,



   “Here am I, and the children God has given me.”[j]



 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. 17 For this reason he had to be made like them,[k] fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.







Dig Deeper

On a precious few occasions in my life I’ve had the opportunity to trek through some beautiful but treacherous natural terrain for a hike.  At times it seemed more like a combination of hiking with rock and cliff climbing as I’ve had a few, at least for me, harrowing moments.  At times I was stunned at how difficult and dangerous it can be to climb through an area that seems like at any moment someone could slip and fall several hundred feet to their death.  Yet, what always strikes me is the fact that the only thing that keeps these challenges from being absolutely insane and truly death-defying is that there has been some sort of rope or railing at certain key moments to help you get on and keep your secure footing.  What really causes me to think in those situations is the fact that at some point someone had to blaze these trails.  They had to go up with no help and no safety ropes or stakes of any kind and put those safety features in.  In those situations it is easy to feel like you are being adventurous and taking a huge risk but the reality is it’s a fairly safe adventure precisely because of the previous work of that trailblazer.  Someone had to take a risk and cut that path so that everyone else could safely follow and complete the journey laid out for them by that first brave soul.



As the author of Hebrews continued to exhort his listeners with the value and importance of remaining faithful and continuing to follow the Messiah, he was well aware of the fact that the way had grown rough.  Surely they knew from the beginning that discipleship was not going to be easy, but the road had become far more arduous than they could have imagined.  As a result many of them had already grown tired and fallen over the side or simply given up.  Many of them were still contemplating doing that very thing.  Part of the problem was that they had failed to keep their eyes on the pure majesty of Jesus their king.  They had let the throne of Christ grow strangely dim and allowed the things of the present age to outshine the gospel in their lives.  Things were beginning to just seem too difficult, too treacherous, and too deadly.  One of the things that they were forgetting, though, was that they too had a trailblazer on their path.  Like a mountain climber that had gone ahead and put anchors into the rock for ropes for those that would come after him so that their climb would be much safer and easier, so had Jesus gone down the road ahead of the and prepared the way. 



The opening point in this section is that Jesus, as Messiah, is the pioneer of God’s family.  The word translated “pioneer” in it’s most basic meaning has to do with someone who begins something so that others may follow him.  It had many possible uses.  One could “pioneer” a family so that others may be born into it.  One could “pioneer” a city in order that one day others might live in it.  One could “pioneer” a school so that others might become students in it and follow him in the truth that he had found.  One could “pioneer” a path through the forest by cutting a road that others could follow.  In its essence it is someone who goes somewhere that no one has previously gone or does something that no one has previously been able to do so that others can follow. 



It has always been God’s plan to have a family of all nations.  He promised Abraham that the whole world would be blessed through the family of his descendants but that promise had been hanging out there unfulfilled for hundreds, and even thousands of years.  The problem was that no one was worthy to fulfill the role as God’s image bearer and take the true title of the Son of God.  No angel had ever done that, although collectively the angels were sometimes referred to in the Old Testament as the sons of God, none of them could ever fulfill the role of being God’s unique Son, the One who would deserve the inheritance as his Son and rule God’s kingdom.  So how was God going to have a family?  How were the sons and daughters in that family going to be brought into the glory of ruling in God’s kingdom as his heirs?  There needed to be a “pioneer,” and that’s exactly what the Messiah was.  He was the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way into the family of the Father (John 14:1-6).



But the surprising part was how he pioneered that path.  The Messiah wasn’t a powerful conquering hero who led a massive army to defeat the pagan nations and exalt God’s kingdom.  No, God’s kingdom would not and could never be brought about with blades and bullets.  That’s the way of the world.  The Messiah came into his throne and established the kingdom of God in a new way precisely by suffering, by drawing all of the evil of the world into one place.  He drew evil onto himself and suffered so that others might be able to have the life of God’s family, the eternal life.  Our pioneer was not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.  In fact he suffered and died so that we might follow his path. 



Hebrews gives us another string of Old Testament quotations in verses 12 and 13 to make his point.  The first quotation comes from Psalm 22.  In that Psalm the righteous and obedient servant of the Lord discovers that he must suffer precisely for that obedience to the Lord, but in verse 22, the tone changes as he begins to see the purpose of the suffering and proclaims that somehow his suffering will enable the Lord’s name to be declared to his brothers and sisters.  God’s family, in other words, would be brought about by the suffering of his servant.  Through that apparent defeat, the kingdom would be established and the praises of God would be sung by the entire family.  That is why Isaiah, writing in chapter 8, declared that the righteous one would trust Yahweh despite his suffering and through this, God would bring about his people.



In verse 14, an indispensable piece of this pioneering work is declared.  The children in God’s family have flesh and blood.  Humanity was enslaved and fallen because they chose to exercise their own will over and against God’s.  Thus, the one who would pioneer the way of doing God’s will must also be human in every way.  They must share in the humanity of us all so that they truly could be a pioneer.  Human beings, for example, have been trying to break the two hour barrier for marathons for many years and we continue to get closer and closer, and one day someone probably will break that mark and become the pioneer.  But it would be pointless and not very impressive or helpful if a horse or a dog were to break that barrier; it must be a human.  In the same way, the pioneer of God’s family, the one that would blaze the trail of obedience for human beings and open the door into God’s family and kingdom must be a flesh and bones human. 



If the pioneer had to be fully human, then that’s exactly what Jesus was.  Through his death, he broke the power that the devil had over humanity.  Death was the most powerful weapon that Satan had because it separated humans in rebellion against God from God forever.  Yet, through the death of the Messiah that championed the path to the Father’s family, death was rendered irrelevant for those who were numbered among God’s people.  Death will still come to humans but for those who entered into the Messiah, death was no longer a slavery to be feared.  It ‘s simply a doorway now rather than a black hole.



An angel couldn’t do all of this and it wasn’t for the benefit of angels.  It was for humans that God sent his Son.  Thus, the Old Covenant, represented by the angels, who were believed by the Jews at the time to be its mediators, was incomplete.  It pointed to work of the Son but could never bring it about.  The practical point, then, was that returning to the promise when the fulfillment had already come was simply crazy.  Just as the slaves in Egypt had been set free by God’s Passover Lamb, so those enslaved to sin had been set free and to walk away from that and to return to the slavery of the sin from which the Son had set them free was far more dangerous and insane than if Israel had turned around in the wilderness and actually sauntered back into Egypt.



But the Son had set them free.  He had become like humanity in every way.  Jesus was not unaware of the human existence.  This allows us as humans to realize that God truly does know us, care for us, and understand us.  This was a remarkable difference from the Greek gods who were constantly lauded for the fact that they were distant and separate from mere humanity.  The one true God, however, is not distant.  Jesus was the embodiment of God in every way and he had become human in every way to serve as our true “pioneer.”



There is a final important point here that should not be missed.  Hebrews says that the Messiah suffered when tempted so as to help those who are tempted.  That sounds very encouraging and it is, but we don’t want to reduce the point to say that when we are tempted to sin that we should just remember that Jesus suffered and died so that we can be forgiven of our sin and escape our temptation.  That is all true and important, but we cannot forget that he is our “pioneer”  He has set the path for us so that we can follow and that path is steeped in suffering for the benefit of others.  That’s why one of the basic calls of discipleship is to pick up our cross and carry it.  Jesus entered into the kingdom and blazed the trail by suffering despite the temptations to avoid that suffering.  Through that suffering he became “complete” in his task as the kingdom bringer.  For us to follow in that path, then, means that for us to bring the kingdom into the lives of those around us, we will also have to suffer and sacrifice for the benefit of others.  The recipients of Hebrews were learning that the hard and some had buckled under the pressure.  That’s why it was so important to keep their eye on the “pioneer.”  It was easy for them, just as it is for us, to take their eye off of the trailblazer and lose sight of the path that he actually cut; to start following a different and much easier path.  The way to avoid doing just that is where Hebrews will pick up in the next section.
 





Devotional Thought

Do you embrace the path of discipleship to sacrifice and lay our lives down for others or do you try to avoid that at all costs and be comfortable?  Sometimes that sacrifice comes in big ways, but often it is the far more grinding process of living below “our means,” giving generously of our time or energy, or being considered a fool by others because of our beliefs.  Trials and sacrifice are not just a season for the follower of the Pioneer.  They are the very way of life to which he has called us.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Hebrews 2:5-9


Jesus Made Fully Human

 5 It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. 6 But there is a place where someone has testified:

   “What is mankind that you are mindful of them,

   a son of man that you care for him?

7 You made them a little[a] lower than the angels;

   you crowned them with glory and honor

 8 and put everything under their feet.”[b][c]



   In putting everything under them,[d] God left nothing that is not subject to them.[e] Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them.[f] 9 But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.





Dig Deeper

It’s not nearly as common these days, but even when I was younger I used to hear people speak quite often of someone being the first in their family to go to college.  It might not seem like such a big deal now but there was a time in our country when it was.  Just a few generations ago going to college was difficult and expensive and very few people could do it.  Most people had to start working quite young to help support the family and they simply didn’t have the means and ways to enable them to go to college.  It was a pretty major event then, if a parent could work hard enough and save enough money to send one of their children to school.  In fact, it would become a much bigger event for the family than just having one member go to school.  The fact that they could send someone on ahead of the rest into the world of opportunity and education, would become a source of pride and identity for the whole family.  In fact, they would begin to embrace the idea that sending off a member of the younger generation to college had changed everything for that family.  Not that much of anything would have seemed to have changed at first glance for the family as a whole, but it had just the same.  The family had sent a representative ahead of them into the world of opportunity that they all hoped for one day, and they believed that through that representative things had changed and a whole new world had been opened for the entire family.



As an illustration this is, of course, limited but it does contain some of the heart of what the writer of Hebrews is getting at here and throughout his letter as one of its primary themes.  God’s human creation was stuck in a world of sin and moral poverty that kept them from realizing the freedom that God intended, and from experiencing creation in the role for which God had created them.  Because humanity was stuck in a fallen state do to sin, there needed to be a representative that could go on ahead and do for all humans what we could not do for ourselves.  It is into that role that Jesus stepped, a role that showed yet another way that Jesus is superior as a mediator for man and another reason that it would be disastrous for those weakening in their resolve to abandon Christ and return to their Judaism or any other religion.



The section that begins in verse 5 is the logical continuation of the argument being made at the end of chapter 1.  Being a superb teacher, the author of Hebrews sprinkles in practical exhortations, though, to his audience throughout the letter in between the larger flow of his teaching, which is what he did in the first four verses of chapter 2.  In returning to the superiority of the Son in comparison to the angelic mediators of the Mosaic Covenant, Hebrews makes a vial point.  The angels may have certain administration and overseeing duties in the present age, but not in the age to come.  The Old Testament makes clear that angels are somehow involved in the oversight of the world (Deut. 32:8; Dan. 10:20-21; Eph. 6:12) but they will not have that role in the age to come.



To understand the line of thinking it is incumbent to know that the Jewish worldview of the time split the world into the present age and the age to come.  The present age is characterized by the separation between humans and God where humans live in the fallen state of sin and rebellion, cut off from God’s heavenly presence.  The age to come was the time when God would return to set things in the world right and would finally rule completely as King and fully dwell with his people, bringing heaven and earth together as one.  The shocking thing about Jesus’ resurrection, according to the early Christians, was that through the power of that event, the age to come had begun to break into the present age.  Living under the rule of God as King and being brought into the life of fullness and reconciliation of the age to come had already begun.  Those who chose to enter into the life of Christ were actually entering into that age to come right now in the middle of the present age. 



If Jesus is King of that future age, and indeed, if that rule has already begun, then it would not make sense to cling to the constructs of the present age.  To make that point clear, however, Hebrews must return to purpose of humankind in the present age.  So he returns to two of the most popular Psalms in the early church, Psalm 8 and Psalm 110.  Human kind was created in the present age to have dominion over God’s creation and to rule over it by administering God’s will into his creation.  But that was quickly thrown away as human beings quickly threw off God’s will that would have led them into wise stewardship of the creation and caring for one another rather than their own will characterized by selfish ambition and doing what “I want to do.”  This quickly threw all of creation into a tailspin as humans spurned God’s mission for us and in so doing, corrupted the job of exercising dominion over God’s creation.



Commentators are largely split over this section, arguing whether Hebrews is referring to the role of human beings in making reference to Psalm 8, or whether he is referring specifically to the Messiah.  I think the solution is to understand that both are correct.  Psalm 8 describes the ideal vocation of human beings.  God created humans in his image to rule over his creation justly and wisely.  God’s intent was always to be King through human agents.  When that vocation was derailed by human sin it also left human beings unable to fulfill the image-bearing purpose described in Psalm 8.  Psalm 8, and Hebrews in quoting from it, refer to human beings as they were created to be not as they are.



But there are many Old Testament passages, particularly in the Psalms and Isaiah, that point to a Messiah that would come to perfectly represent Israel by being the one that would be faithful to God’s calling.  In Psalm 80, the Psalmist wrote a passage with clear Messianic overtones: “Return to us, God Almighty!  Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine, the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself.  Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at your rebuke your people perish.  Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself.  Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name” (Ps. 80:14-18).  The Messiah was the one that Yahewh himself would raise up, the son of man that was at his right hand.  He was the one who would come and fulfill the role of humanity as it was meant to be.  He was the one who perfectly did God’s will on earth as it is in heaven and who perfectly reflected the image of God into the world.  And he was the one who had everything subjected to him, being put under his feet.  He was the ideal of humanity pointed to in Psalm 8.



But that raised a problem that Hebrews deals with directly at the end of verse 8.  If everything was subjected to Jesus as god’s Son then why did it sure not seem that way?  That wasn’t just a theological difficulty that some brainy teacher cooked up.  This was a real life concern for the recipients of this letter.  If Jesus really was God’s Son and the enthroned King of the world with all authority invested in him, then why were his people being so consistently persecuted?  Why were they suffering constantly to the point that many had walked away and many more were considering it?



The key to all of this is to understand what Jesus meant in John 11:25 when Jesus declared that he was “the resurrection and the life.”  When Jesus resurrected from the dead he went ahead as the firstfruits into God’s future resurrection age.  He really did enter into that age to come where all things are under his feet and, this part is key, he is “the life.”  He is the means through which we can begin to taste of that life even while in the present age.  This is how Jesus can both be said to be reigning with all things under his feet and yet it can also be said that this hasn’t been completed just yet.  Jesus subjected himself to becoming totally human, a little lower than the angels, for a little while but he is now enjoying the role of glory and honor that God set out for all humans as our perfect representative.  When we enter into his life we enter into his reign and begin to work out the reality of the age to come one moment at a time in anticipation of it’s coming fullness one day when he returns.  In that sense, Jesus is truly the king of the world right now, and at the same time, there is more to come as his rule is fully consummated. 



But we should never lose sight through the deep teaching of Hebrews that this was practical, life and death spiritual situations that the author was addressing.  It’s not just theological mumbo jumbo intended to make the author look smart.  Why all of this information about the intended purpose and fall of human beings?  Why all the talk of Jesus as the representative of humanity and the one who currently reigns with glory and honor?  Why all the Old Testament quotations.  It all had a very real purpose which Hebrews will begin to deal with more fully as we go along, but at which the author begins to hint at in verse 9.  Jesus showed himself to be God’s perfect image bearer and Son (something the angels, prophets, and no other human being could ever claim) by suffering death.  In fact he tasted and defeated death for everyone.  That is how he fulfilled God’s will and how he came into his glory.  In a world of lack, the only way to bring wholeness is to sacrifice for others.  The only way to bring completeness to the role set apart for humanity was for Jesus to come and fulfill that role by suffering and dying as a representative for all.  And the only way for his people to begin to work out the implications of the fact that Christ really had been crowned and was ruling through his people was for them to do for others what Christ had done for them.  Not, of course, in the sense of dying as a representative for others but in the sense of sacrificing and suffering for the benefit of others. 



And that’s where things really would have hit home for the original audience of Hebrews.  Their suffering was not a sign that Jesus was a failed Messiah, that they were a failed people, or that Christianity was a bankrupt way of life.  Their suffering was, in a strange way, that he has not yet fully explained, a sign that Jesus was indeed the rightful King of the world, ruling from heaven at the right hand of the Father.







Devotional Thought

How does it change your perspective and your actions to realize that your trials, sacrifices, and sufferings for the kingdom of God are actually signs of Jesus’ rule rather than weakness?  They are often very means through which Jesus’ reign will break into the lives of others.  Spend some time contemplating that today and what it means for you in practical terms.


Friday, April 20, 2012

Hebrews 2:1-4

Warning to Pay Attention
1 We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. 2 For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, 3 how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. 4 God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.


Dig Deeper
“Where am I,” I wondered as I looked up and noticed that wherever I was driving it was not where I should be. It took me a few moments to realize that I had driven well past my exit and needed to find someplace to turn around. I had been driving home from out of town and was not sleepy or anything like that but I was tired and it was causing me to “zone out” a bit. I realized that without even realizing it, I had driven a good 6 or 8 miles past my exit and turning around where I was at would be no small task, in fact it would involve getting off of the interstate, driving through quite a bit of traffic and getting on the other side to go back where I needed to. It was quite a mistake that cost me about 30 minutes by the time I got back to my normal exit. But that’s what happens when your inattentive in your driving or in any other task. I didn’t make a conscience choice to miss my exit but I wasn’t diligent in what I was doing either, and that caused me to drift well past where I wanted to go. In the end, the consequences weren’t that bad but I was driving alone and I wasn’t in that big of a hurry. What if that was not the case though? What if I had been driving the President of the United States and had to get him to a major speech that he had to be on time for? What if I had made the same inattentive mistake then and drifted well past the exit? What was simply a mistake in the first scenario suddenly becomes a monumental one when the stakes are higher. That too, is true of most things in life.

In chapter 1 of Hebrews we have seen a solid case for the superiority of Christ. He is the exact representation of God and has a nature, status, and role that no other being could claim. The Old Testament Scriptures themselves, says Hebrews, stressed the preeminence of Christ when it comes to the relationship between Jesus and the Father, when it comes to the position and nature of Christ, and certainly when it comes to the authority that Jesus has. In every way, Jesus is superior to the beings that were highly respected in first century Judaism as the mediators between God and man who helped bring the much-revered Law of God to Moses and the rest of the people of Israel.

But this is not just some theology class for Christians of the first century to help them better understand the nature of Jesus, the Messiah. We do not have here an example of a teacher waxing eloquent about deeper matters that have no bearing on the real lives of his audience. The writer of Hebrews knew that the Christian community to which he was writing was struggling. Some had already given into the pressure of society and family to abandon Christ and had done so. Others were flirting with the idea. It just all seemed too difficult at times and returning to Judaism seemed to have a lot going for it. In most cases it would have meant an immediate restoration of familial and friendship relationships that were broken as a result of them following Christ. They would have been restored back into the Jewish community and found it much easier to work and live on a daily basis. That meant that the stakes were extremely high. What they understood about Christ and his importance in God’s plan for his people was absolutely vital.

The concern that the author of Hebrews had was something that he put in nautical terms. We must, he exhorted, “Pay the most careful attention” so that we “do not drift away.” The first term regarding attention comes from a word, “prosecheo,” which was used to render the idea of anchoring a ship, while the second term, “pararreo,” would describe a ship that had been allowed to drift past the harbor or docking point and fall victim to a shipwreck because the sailor carelessly failed to pay attention to the conditions. With that in mind, we could easily translate this verse with the consistent nautical theme to say “Therefore, we must anchor ourselves to what we have heard so that we do not drift past our harbor and get shipwrecked.”

The problem that they were having was not a lack of information about Jesus or even incorrect information regarding the Messiah, it was that they were becoming careless in paying attention to the most important details. This wasn’t an issue of hearing the truth but of heeding the truth.

And it was a truth that flowed from the superior nature of Christ that the first chapter focused on, which is why verse 1 begins with the word “therefore,” (the NIV has moved it to the middle of the sentence for readability purposes). Because of the incredible level of importance of these issues regarding Jesus, it’s not just that attention should be paid to these matters but the most careful attention. It’s one thing to slack off a little in personal health or some area like that but this was far more important than that. Missing a turn when I’m by myself and in no hurry is bad; doing it while driving the President to an important engagement is monumental. Drifting away from something in life can be bad, but drifting away from the revelation of God’s own Son was a matter of life and death and deserved their most diligent attention.

To make the point crystal clear Hebrews moves from lesser to greater to demonstrate the importance of the greater, a technique that was an extremely popular rabbinic tool during the time that this was written. The message that was spoken through the angels, in other words the Law, was a message that was binding and demanded one’s obedience and devotion. Violations of the Law received just punishment. This was something that no Jew would argue with. If one didn’t cling tightly to the Law they deserved the punishment that God had declared for those who violated the Covenant with Him. After all, what would be the point of entering into a Covenant if there were no negative consequences for breaking it?

There is, of course, no actual Old Testament passage that specifically states that the angels gave the message of the Law to Moses but by the first century, that was the firm Jewish understanding based, in part, on inferences from passages like Deuteronomy 33:2. The important assertion here, though, is the clear idea that the Law was a good thing that needed to be adhered to but it was administered by angels, the mere messengers of God.

Having already established the distinctive differences between the Son and angels, the thrust becomes obvious. If the lesser revelation given through messengers was important to hold to, then how much more so is that true of the complete revelation from God given through his unique Son? “How shall we escape,” Hebrews asks, “if we ignore such a great salvation.” The word for “ignore” in verse 3 is “amaleo” and it means to neglect carelessly as a result of apathy. In the mind of the author, the reason that they were drifting from the truth of Christ and his people was that they were apathetic to the nature of who he really was. To know that Jesus was the exact representation and embodiment of God and to consider walking away from that could only be a result of apathy and caring more one’s self and one’s situation than the greatness of the nature of Christ.

This was important stuff because, as the technique of lesser to greater makes clear, if a Jew wouldn’t think of drifting from the Old Covenant lest they face appropriate judgment, then how much more on the hook do they think they will be if they carelessly drift away from the greatest and truest revelation that God has given of himself—his own Son? This salvation that is found in the life of Christ, after all, was declared by the Son himself and confirmed by the eyewitnesses who were there (notice that the author says that the eyewitnesses confirmed to “us,” seemingly indicating that the author was not among the original disciples of Jesus but was a second generation convert). God had further confirmed that Jesus was truly God’s Son and the message about him was true through the signs, wonders, miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit that were so necessary to verify the truth of their message before the New Covenant Scriptures were written and thoroughly dispersed to God’s people.

The writer of Hebrews knew that the message of the gospel was literally a matter of life and death and not something to be toyed with so he urgently pleaded with them to ensure that they weren’t drifting in their understanding of Jesus and the importance of clinging to him alone. He will give further reason for not drifting away from Christ and the dire consequences of doing so, but we should never read Hebrews and not take it as an opportunity to examine our own lives and make sure that we have not been careless in our own hearts and in danger of drifting past our harbor of safety.


Devotional Thought
Take an objective look at your own spiritual life. Have you drifted in some areas? Are you a little further out from the harbor than you used to be in areas like Bible study, prayer, evangelism, building relationships in the body, serving others, helping the poor, etc.? In other words, have you drifted in your walk with God? If you have, it’s almost certain that the underlying problem is that in some way you have taken your eyes off of Christ and forgot the incredible superiority of his nature and the Covenant that we have with him. Take some time today to consider what the writer of Hebrews might say to you or remind you of in your situation.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Hebrews 1:5-14

The Son Superior to Angels
5 For to which of the angels did God ever say,
“You are my Son;
today I have become your Father”[a]?

Or again,
“I will be his Father,
and he will be my Son”[b]?

6 And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says,
“Let all God’s angels worship him.”[c]

7 In speaking of the angels he says,
“He makes his angels spirits,
and his servants flames of fire.”[d]

8 But about the Son he says,
“Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever;
a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.
9 You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions
by anointing you with the oil of joy.”[e]

10 He also says,
“In the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
11 They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
12 You will roll them up like a robe;
like a garment they will be changed.
But you remain the same,
and your years will never end.”[f]

13 To which of the angels did God ever say,

“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet”[g]?

14 Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?



Dig Deeper
My wife recently came home one afternoon with a plate of food that she had put together at a professional meeting that she had at work which ran from early morning through the early afternoon. They had catered a lunch buffet for the people in attendance and had encouraged her and other people there to take a plate home with them. She had eaten to her fill but she thought that she would make a plate and bring it home to me. When she arrived at home I was in the process of making myself some lunch. I can’t remember now what I was making but I do remember that I really had a taste that day for whatever it was and was pretty set on eating that for lunch. She put the plate of food that she had brought in the kitchen and then proceeded to tell me how amazing and wonderful this food from a local Mexican restaurant was. She was describing the flavors and the quality of the food and brought up several other points of why this huge plate of tasty food was superior to the little sad plate of leftovers that I was getting ready to eat. At first I wondered what the point was of going into the details on the virtues of this plate of food and was even thinking to myself “okay, I get the idea.” But there was a specific purpose to why she was going into detail about how great this food was. She didn’t want it to go to waste and really knew that I would enjoy that plate of food much more than the one I was planning on eating. So the whole intent of singing the praises of this food was not just to elucidate the finer points of this food but was to set up the fact that I should eat the food that she had brought and not the other plate of food.

In a similar way, the whole first chapter of Hebrews is a set-up. It’s not a set-up in the bad sense of that phrase as though the author is somehow sucking us into some line of argument only to drop some boom on us that we never saw coming. It is a set-up in the sense that it is building to a point. Fist of all, though, we don’t want to lose sight of the fact that this whole section has opened with the idea that God “has spoken to us by his Son.” Everything else rests and depends on that phrase and is a further explanation of why God would do such a thing. So this section draws out the comparison and contrast between the Son and the angels in order to demonstrate the superiority of the Son in comparison to much-respected messengers and mediators of God like the prophets and angels. But the author is not merely trumpeting the praises of the Son just for the sake of doing so, or so that we will get warm and gooey feelings about the Son. Our author is not only a skilled writer but also a supremely gifted teacher and every part of this lesson has a point. It is a point that he will state directly in the next chapter where he clearly lays out his primary purpose in writing, “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away” (Heb. 2:1). This is the thesis statement for the entirety of Hebrews and is the punch-line for the set-up material here in chapter 1.

Behind this all, of course, is the deep concern that our author had for the Christian community to which he was writing. They were facing difficult circumstances at every turn and he wanted to reassure them that their commitment to Christ was a worthwhile choice. It could be easy in the face of persecution to start to question whether they really were God’s people and whether Jesus really was the Messiah, the King. How could Jesus be the true King of the world and still his people be constantly facing the circumstances that they were living through? But Hebrews gives the message that the Messiah was the unique Son of the one true God and was worthy of their devotion even if it meant being martyred for their faith.

To make his point, the author of Hebrews used a technique that was quite common in his day, in which he would put together a barrage of Old Testament quotations that would build together, make a case, and prove his point in such an overwhelming fashion that the reader would have no other option than to agree with the mound of evidence that had been offered up. In this section, our author has presented three pairs of Old Testament passages and then finishes off his cavalcade of evidence with a capper from Psalm 110. All of these add up to show the superiority and preeminence of Christ to the Old Covenant mediators, specifically in this section, the angels.

The first pair of Old Testament quotations, in verse 5, demonstrate that the Son is superior because he has a unique relationship with the Father that no angel could ever claim (it is interesting that a group like the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that Jesus is a created being, and is in fact, an angel, despite this entire section which makes the clear point that Jesus was not, never has been, and never will be an angel and is far superior to any angel in every way). The first quotation comes from Psalm 2:7 and the second from 2 Samuel 7:14. Both passages were considered to be Messianic prophecies before Jesus even came on the scene, and the early church quickly grabbed them as among their favorite passages to explain who Jesus was and his relationship with the Father. It is important to note that when the Psalmist, speaking of the Messiah, says that “today I have become your Father,” it is not referring to the relationship between the Father and the Son, as he was already the eternal Son at the time of his Incarnation (Heb. 5:8). The point was that at the resurrection, Jesus was declared to be the King of the universe. The Psalm is using the language of a King who would install his son into his rightful royal position, declaring that “today you have become my son”. Jesus had been officially installed as the co-regent with the Father and that fact had been revealed to the world through his resurrection.

The second coupling of Old Testament passages, in verses 6-7, stresses the positive nature of angels (making it less likely that Hebrews was dealing with any sort of angel-worshipping fringe that needed to be countered and put down) but demonstrates their inferior nature, purpose, and position. Psalm 97:7 declares that every creature, including angels and even the idols and false gods must worship God. This passage is stunning in that it applies a call for worship of God by all creatures and applies it to the Son. This is only possible if the author of Hebrews believed the Son to be equal in Godhood to the Father. But the Son is not just superior in nature, he is also superior in his ministry. Rather than being the Son and a co-regent with the Father, so to speak, the angels, according to Psalm 104:4 are mere servants of God.

The final pairing of passages, in verses 8-12, comes from Psalm 45:6-7 and Psalm 102:25-27 which both highlight the authority of the Son, the deity of the Son and the eternal nature of the Son, things that even the angels could not claim. The Son sits on the throne with a scepter ruling over his kingdom, and has been anointed as king and set above his companions, those referred to as his brothers and sisters—Christians, in other words—(Heb. 2:12). He has authority, but is also eternal as the one that will fulfill David’s Messianic Kingdom by having a kingdom that will last forever and ever. He was there “in the beginning” and was the agent of the creation of the realms of heaven and earth. They will pass away and need to be renewed, as they will be in the resurrection of the age to come, but the Son will never wear out and will never change. This is an important aspect of the Son because it shows him to be unchangeable as only God can claim to be. This whole section, of course, stresses the deity of the Son, but nowhere is it more clear than in verse 8’s reference to Psalm 45 in which the Father addresses the Son and says “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever.”

The passage is capped off by a finishing flourish from Psalm 110:1, a passage that the author alluded to in verse 3 when he declared that the Son “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high”. This passage was an important way to end this section because it alludes to one of the primary themes of Hebrews. How can the Son be on the throne and the world still be so messed up? Well God had declared that the Son would be ruling on his throne during a period of time when all of the enemies had not yet been made a footstool. That would come but the rest of the letter will work out the mystery of the Son really being on the throne but there being so much that seems to say that he isn’t. For now though, the emphasis is that the Messiah is ruling and that’s clear distinction from the angels who are but servants to God that minister to his people as verse 14 states.

The point of all of this was to make clear the incredible and superior nature of the Son. Who would choose the inferior when the superior was clearly available. At first glance this might all sound like lofty language that really doesn’t have much relevance to the real world. After all, who cares about scepters and thrones and the nature of the Son when you can’t feed your family due to persecution for your faith and have become an outcast in your own society? But this is the brilliant nature of the teacher that has written Hebrews. This is not simply “deep teaching” that people should know, it is vital information. If all of this is true, and the barrage of Old Testament passages as applied to the Messiah have made clear that the Son is superior then that matters. But the point of Hebrews is much more relevant and powerful than simply saying “hey, the Messiah is superior in every way, so cling to him and take whatever comes your way.” The Son is superior, and the sermon will make that point clear, but it is the nature of that superiority and the nature of Jesus reigning that matters and brings purpose and significant meaning to the suffering that they were facing. We will get to all of that in time, but for now the foundation is being poured and the fact that the Messiah is a vastly different sort of mediator between God and man than had ever been seen is a practical truth that we need to embrace and work out in our own time and context. It does, after all, determine how we respond to our situations in life as the people of the Messiah who reigns.


Devotional Thought
What are the situations that you have faced or are facing that make you question your commitment to Jesus, the Messiah? During times like those, why is knowing and deeply understanding the nature of Jesus and who he is important to staying strong in your faith?

Monday, April 16, 2012

Hebrews 1:1-4

God’s Final Word: His Son
1 In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. 4 So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.


Dig Deeper
It seems like many years ago now that I was a basketball coach at the high school at which I taught. We went to great lengths every year to make sure that our team was very close knit and spent as much time together as we could. That usually proved valuable when we went into the battle of a game together. But the seasons could get long and were full of pressures both from within the sport of basketball and from outside life. Every now and then during the process of a long season a young man would come to me and tell me that they were considering leaving the team and quitting basketball. In general I don’t think that it’s a good thing to quit what you start and so I would sit down with them and try to encourage them. I would remind them of the benefits and advantages of playing on the team and reminisce with them of all of the fun we had together as well as the hard work they put in. It certainly was not a life and death situation, but giving up was something that I didn’t feel like they should do lightly. I really wanted them to think through what they were doing.

Imagine a scenario that was life and death, though. Imagine being a young person in the first century who grew up in a tight knit Jewish family in Rome. The community of about 50,000 Jews had returned to Rome over ten years ago after being expelled for a time after run-ins with the Roman Emperor. But your community had carved out a pretty comfortable living and a good economic niche for itself since returning and you remember fondly taking part in all of the traditions, holidays, and community life in which you grew up. But then someone had shared the gospel with you and as strange as it sounded, you knew deep down that it made sense of all of the Scriptures that you had grown up hearing, studying, and hoping in. So you were baptized into the life of Christ and joined the Christian community. That was not a decision that you made lightly because you knew it would have huge consequences in your life and you were right. You were pretty quickly drummed out of your job, ostracized from the Jewish community, and most of your family would not even look at you any longer, let alone have anything to do with you. Making a living became incredibly difficult and you could not have made it without the love and support of other Christians who were scattered around Rome and who loved and supported one another as family, just as Christ had called you all to live.

But the long days of demeaning work and being mistreated constantly had begun to grind you down. Doubts began to gnaw away at you. How could Jesus be the Messiah, the King of the world that was sitting at the right hand of the Father ruling in his kingdom over his people and have them being treated like this? How could you really be part of the kingdom people if you were all at the very bottom of society where even many slaves got along better than you did? You would slowly begin to remember fondly the days of your youth in Judaism. Maybe they didn’t have the truth in total but at least they weren’t struggling through life like this. They were being put out of society at every turn, and to make it worse the Emperor Nero had really started to ramp up persecution of Christians throughout Rome, so it really was becoming a matter of life and death. You know that the other Christians are gathering tonight after work to eat the Lord’s Supper meal together, to worship, to sing, to encourage one another, and to hear a word of encouragement from the leader of the medium-sized group of Christians that met together in your leader’s house. Perhaps you wouldn’t go at all. After all, you had already known two people in the group that grew so weary that they returned to their Jewish families and community and life had almost instantly gotten better for them. Maybe the same would be true for you. . . But for some reason you decided to go and as you arrived you heard the leader of the group telling everyone that he had just received a new scroll. It was a sermon of encouragement from a well known teacher. As he unfurled the scroll, you began to hear the words “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoke to us by his Son. . . “

That was something of the situation into which Hebrews was written. It is unknown for sure who wrote Hebrews, to whom it was written, and the specific situations surrounding the purpose and occasion for the letter. We don’t have time for all of the possibilities here but it seems likely that Hebrews was written to the disciples in Rome in the mid 60’s AD just prior to the worst of Nero’s persecutions (perhaps about eight years after Paul wrote his letter to the Romans). The author of Hebrews is unknown and always will be, but if a guess had to ventured based on the internal and circumstantial evidence, it seems that Apollos might be the best candidate. It appears, though, that the letter was written to a church that was starting to falter under persecution and as a result had some who had left Christianity and returned to their Jewish faith (this could have included both ethnic Jews and Gentiles who had converted to Judaism or were God fearing Gentiles before converting to Christianity), and many others who were starting to falter and weaken in their faith in Jesus as the true Messiah.

From the very start, then, the primary purpose of Hebrews is to call the people of Jesus back to faith in Christ by seeing that he is the superior, and the only mediator between God and man. In the past God worked through a variety of methods to communicate his word to men including, says commentator George Guthrie, “commands, exhortations, stories, visions, dreams, mighty act, breathtaking theophanies, and a still small voice to name a few.” But now God has spoken definitively, completely, and with finality through his Son. Jesus Christ is the word of God in the flesh (Jn. 1:1-14) and is the purest form of God communicating with humans. Our author contrasts the old methods of communication with the superior and complete method of the Son in four respects. The first is in regards to era: the past versus the last days (a term that early Christians believed was the time between the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of all believers). The second is in regard to the recipients of the revelation: our forefathers versus “us”. The third is in regards to the agents of communication: The prophets versus his Son. And finally, in the past he communicated in “various ways”. The author never explicitly states what the contrast is there but the obvious implication in the introduction and throughout the sermon of Hebrews is that now God has communicated in fullness in one way, the most excellent way. That, of course, is through his Son.

In this short but incredibly majestic introduction which consists of one expertly crafted sentence in the original Greek, Hebrews affirms seven important aspects concerning the Son. The first is that he has been appointed heir of all things, an allusion to Psalm 2:8. The inheritance of all things by the Son has begun but will only be consummated at the second coming and resurrection of the believers. The second thing is that the Son was the agent through whom the Father, the source of the creation, created the universe (Jn. 1:3; Col. 1:16). The third aspect is that he is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of God. “Exact representation” is a translation of the Greek word “charakter” which referred to something that was stamped with the exact impression of the original. In other words, the Son is the manifestation of God’s presence, his glory, and the one that provides a perfect picture in the flesh of the Father. The fourth aspect is that the Son is the one that sustains all things by his word. This is not in the sense of Atlas simply holding up the world in Greek mythology but in the sense of keeping the created order together and continuing to operate. Fifth, through the Son the purification for sin has now been made available. This is a concept that the author will unpack later in the sermon (Hebrews, after all, is really more of a sermon or teaching lesson in written form than a letter), but the point is that the forgiveness of sin found in the Son is permanent and would lead into the presence of God. The sixth element is that the Son is seated at the right hand of the Father, indicating both his closeness to the Father which signified his ability to rule, and the fact that he was indeed ruling over the kingdom in the present time (this is an allusion to Psalm 110:1).

Finally is that the Son was shown as superior to the angels by having a superior name to the angels. In much first century Jewish thought the angels were seen as mediators of the covenant between God and man, having, among other things, brought the Law directly to Moses. They continued to maintain the status of mediating the Law between God and Israel down to the present time of the first century. Many have concluded from the first two chapters of Hebrews that the author was addressing some specific angel worshipping cult, but that is speculative and it is far more likely that he was simply referring to the status of angels as mediators. The Son, however, was a unique and superior mediator in that he was given “the name.” There is probably a dual inference going on with this statement. The first point is that “name” referred to the whole of a person, or their “life”. Certainly the life of Christ is unique. The disciples would have recognized the fact that hey had been baptized into the life of Christ, the resurrection life. This (not just future but also present) hope was something that no other belief, certainly not a Christ-free Judaism, could offer. The second aspect wrapped up in the “name” of Christ was that this was a title or designation that was typically reserved for God. God was called “the name,” and so that title had rightly been inferred on the Son according to Hebrews.

The original audience of Hebrews might have been going through trying times and were tempted to walk away from the family of Christ to return to their old life, beliefs, and practices that were safer and easier, but they shouldn’t because if they did it would be clear that they were taking their eyes off of who Christ really was. He is superior in every way and although it might not seem like it, God was still in control. Jesus really was on the throne as the rightful ruler of the world. As this sermon unfolds, Hebrews will brilliantly and practically lay out the reasons for following Christ alone and clinging to him like a “bridge over troubled water.” At the same time, he will give hope to the hurting and show them, and us, just how it works out that Jesus really is the rightful king of the world ruling from his throne in the very midst of struggles, trials, and persecutions. That was the message to the Hebrews that we will unpack: Christ is preeminent and he reigns today and forever!


Devotional Thought
You most likely aren’t facing the kind of harsh life and constant persecution that the first recipients of Hebrews were but that doesn’t mean that you don’t regularly face trials that leave you considering whether following Christ is worth continuing to follow? Imagine that these opening lines of Hebrews were written to you during those times of struggle. How do the words of the author help you to remain faithful to Christ?

Friday, April 06, 2012

Acts 28:23-33

Note: This concludes our study on the book of Acts. On Monday, April 16th we will begin with a study of the book of Hebrews.



23 They arranged to meet Paul on a certain day, and came in even larger numbers to the place where he was staying. He witnessed to them from morning till evening, explaining about the kingdom of God, and from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets he tried to persuade them about Jesus. 24 Some were convinced by what he said, but others would not believe. 25 They disagreed among themselves and began to leave after Paul had made this final statement: “The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your ancestors when he said through Isaiah the prophet:



26 “‘Go to this people and say,

“You will be ever hearing but never understanding;

you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.”

27 For this people’s heart has become calloused;

they hardly hear with their ears,

and they have closed their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes,

hear with their ears,

understand with their hearts

and turn, and I would heal them.’[a]


28 “Therefore I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!” [29] [b]

30 For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. 31 He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!





Dig Deeper
If you ever want to see a group of people get upset quickly go to a movie with them that they think doesn’t have a good ending. That will the irritate people to no end. It’s almost amusing when a movie ends and it clearly had a different agenda than people in the audience wanted it to have. I recall watching one movie like that recently and talking with a bunch of folks who also saw it. They were all equally upset by the ending which they thought was abrupt and didn’t nicely answer all of the questions that they had about what had happened in the movie. But that was part of the point. Life is complicated and it doesn’t always tie everything up and put a nice little bow on it. The movie intentionally left things open-ended, possibly for the mystery of it and possibly to leave the door open for a sequel which has yet to come. I am always surprised, though, how much we can get invested in something and think that we can go beyond expectation and into the realm of having the right to have the questions that we want answered dealt with. We tend to forget that an author, or movie maker, or some other such person is the one choosing the agenda of the story and the ending usually fits with his or her agenda. If we are left wholly unsatisfied with the ending, it’s probably because we didn’t follow the author’s agenda and substituted our own in there somewhere without often even realizing it.



As we come to the end of Acts it is easy to feel a bit like that. What is up with the ending, we might ask. It’s like the parable of the prodigal son that Luke included in chapter 15 of his gospel. There is not a satisfying ending for most of us. After spending the last quarter or so of the book of Acts following Paul on his long and winding journey to get to Rome, surely there has to be more than this. Surely Luke wouldn’t end the book on us by describing one more instance of Paul preaching the gospel to Jews with mixed results and then just fade to black. Are you kidding!



What about his activities in Rome? All Luke tells us is that Paul spent two years preaching and proclaiming the kingdom from his prison house. Wait a minute, Luke, we might feel like shouting at this point. What about the rich and powerful Romans? And most importantly what about that little date with Caesar? Did the Jews show up or send a letter to the Emperor to plead their case concerning Paul? Or did they figure there was no point and just let it drop which would have caused the charges against Paul to eventually be dropped?



It seems more likely that Paul did face the Emperor and was released, but the big question that I will always have is what was said between Paul and Nero. Wouldn’t that have potentially been one of the most fascinating conversations in the history of the world? Why hasn’t Luke told us about that? Why is all of this just left up in the air?



It is at this point that we have to take a step back, as frustrating a step as that might be, and realize that Luke is not foolish. He certainly knew that his readers would have the same questions. That leaves us with two primary possibilities. Either Luke was writing this account before Paul met with Caesar. That’s certainly a possibility. Some have even purported that Luke wrote Acts to help Paul document his defense before Nero, although that seems unlikely to me. The other possibility is that Luke has written of Paul’s journey to Rome for other reasons and that he wasn’t focusing on Paul’s confrontational moment with one man, as fascinating as it might be. If that is the case, then the journey to have an appeal with Caesar was a means to the real end in Luke’s mind rather than the end itself. That seems reasonable and likely, although it is certainly possible that the answer to Luke’s ending lies in a combination of the two. Luke may have finished writing before Paul encountered Nero and that wasn’t his primary objective anyway, so there was no need to wait for the ending to come. There is, of course, a third possibility that like so many movies with unsatisfying endings that Luke intended to write a third book that picked up where Acts left off, but that seems more like speculation based on our desire rather than anything that is based on what we find in the text itself.



Luke stated from the very beginning (1:8) that Acts would be an account of the Holy Spirit coming upon God’s people and guiding them to be witnesses of the gospel to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. It is important to understand this as Luke’s primary theme. It seems that for him, Paul going to Rome was the symbolic cap on that mission. The apostle to the Gentiles proclaiming the kingdom of God to the Jews first and then the Gentiles, as had always been his pattern, was the symbol that demonstrated that the gospel was truly going to the ends of the earth. In the ancient mind, Rome was the capitol of the world so once the gospel reached there, it was just a matter of time before it was proclaimed everywhere.



This would not be the end of Paul’s journey. Early church history tells us that Paul was released by Nero, although we have no details beyond that. He would continue his missionary journeys. In fact, one of his stated reasons for coming to Rome was his deep desire to establish them as a base to allow him to spread the gospel into Spain (Rom. 15:24). We don’t know if Paul every reached Spain but he did continue to travel and preach, was re-arrested, and likely wrote the pastoral letters to Timothy and Titus during that time, eventually being put to death in Rome.



For Paul, though, it seems like a fitting place to end the journey of Acts. Not with a monumental showdown with Nero but with another chance to proclaim the truth of God’s kingdom to his fellow Jews about whom he cared deeply and desperately desired to accept the gospel truth (Romans 9:1-5). As usual, a few listened to Paul and, it seems, came to belief, but most did not. They were willing to hear him out until he declared that they had become the fulfillment of Isaiah’s words from Isaiah 6. The prophet Isaiah had spoken of a people that had so rejected God’s ways and hardened their hearts against any other possibility that even if they heard and saw the truth they would not accept it. If they were truly humble to God’s ways then they might see and hear and accept but their rejection would be the evidence of their hardness of heart (a term that had to do with not being open to God’s will).



Surely Paul would not have embraced the idea that the rejection of the Jews meant that no Jews would enter into the kingdom of God in the future. That is what Romans 11 is all about. But the time of hoping that the nation of Israel would turn en masse to Jesus and trust him as their Messiah was running out. The time for national repentance was about over (a fact that would be sadly confirmed and finalized by God with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem just a few short years after the closing of Acts). It seems that Luke is telling us that the mission of spreading the gospel would now turn more fully to the Gentiles because they will listen. The kingdom of God would consist of all nations but the pattern of “Jew first, then the Gentiles” was perhaps no longer needed. The rejection by the majority of the Jewish leadership in Rome was also symbolic. The urgent preaching for the nation of Israel to turn was coming to an end. In the future, their special status would be gone and they would be preached to as individuals just like individuals of any other nation. The nation of Israel had rejected God but Jewish people had not somehow stumbled beyond recovery (Rom. 11:11). In other words, and this is the point of Romans 11, the gospel was open to both Jews and Gentiles and as all nations came under the one umbrella of the kingdom through God’s true son (Jesus was the true Israel, Paul would argue in agreement with all four gospels that make that same case) that is how “all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26).



It is fitting, when we follow Luke’s intent, for Acts to end like this with Paul in chains in a house in Rome, still preaching and proclaiming the kingdom of God. Declaring to his Jewish brothers, in his typical uncompromising way, that to reject the Messiah was to completely reject God, and then to turn his eyes to the Gentile fields. Caesar was just one man after all. The real star was the kingdom of God. The truly important thing was that the kingdom of be continued to be preached.



With all of that said, maybe Luke did intentionally not really finish his story. Maybe, just maybe that is part of the point. In the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, Luke never really gives us an ending. How will the older son respond to the father’s mercy? Will he accept his younger brother’s inclusion into the family and embrace his father? The story is left unfinished intentionally by both Jesus and Luke because the decision had not yet been made at that point in Jesus’ life. The Jews, and the Pharisees and other leaders in particular were the older brother in that story and it was yet up to them how they would respond to the call of Jesus who was playing the role of the Father in the story. Sadly, Luke goes on to tell us through the remainder of the gospel of Luke that the older brother rejected the father and put him up on a cross to die. That story was left open-ended so that the hearers might find their place in it and finish the story themselves.



If Luke had ended Acts with a climactic showdown between Nero and Paul it might have fulfilled our thirst for a good story with a tidy ending but that’s not what our gifted author wanted to do. The story isn’t complete. The kingdom was being preached but the story must go on. It is up to the reader to pick up and continue. In that way, each one of us becomes part of the story. We are Acts chapter 29. The kingdom must continue to be preached, but the rest of the story is up to you and me. What has God called us to do? How are we going to respond? What trials are we going to face as we faithfully declare the word of God? Where is our “Judea,” our “Samaria,” and most importantly perhaps, where is our “ends of the earth”?





Devotional Thought
Do you have the same passion to proclaim the kingdom of God that Paul had? Do you take every opportunity to share about God’s kingdom with your neighbors, friends, family and co-workers, knowing that perhaps only a few will really listen? Is the simple act of proclaiming the kingdom of God with boldness and without hindrance something to which you are truly committed?

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Acts 28:11-22

Paul’s Arrival at Rome
11 After three months we put out to sea in a ship that had wintered in the island—it was an Alexandrian ship with the figurehead of the twin gods Castor and Pollux. 12 We put in at Syracuse and stayed there three days. 13 From there we set sail and arrived at Rhegium. The next day the south wind came up, and on the following day we reached Puteoli. 14 There we found some brothers and sisters who invited us to spend a week with them. And so we came to Rome. 15 The brothers and sisters there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. At the sight of these people Paul thanked God and was encouraged. 16 When we got to Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself, with a soldier to guard him.

Paul Preaches at Rome Under Guard
17 Three days later he called together the local Jewish leaders. When they had assembled, Paul said to them: “My brothers, although I have done nothing against our people or against the customs of our ancestors, I was arrested in Jerusalem and handed over to the Romans. 18 They examined me and wanted to release me, because I was not guilty of any crime deserving death. 19 The Jews objected, so I was compelled to make an appeal to Caesar. I certainly did not intend to bring any charge against my own people. 20 For this reason I have asked to see you and talk with you. It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain.”

21 They replied, “We have not received any letters from Judea concerning you, and none of our people who have come from there has reported or said anything bad about you. 22 But we want to hear what your views are, for we know that people everywhere are talking against this sect.”



Dig Deeper
As Christians, I think it’s safe to say that we all desire to grow spiritually and become more like Christ each day. Sometimes that process seems to be humming along quite nicely and at other times we seem to be a bit stuck in our growth, or our walk with God, or in knowing what his will is for our lives in any given moment. It is often in those times that we turn to God in prayer and ask for his help in our lives. But if you’re anything like me that process of asking God for help came become quite amusing from a certain perspective if you really take a step back and look at it. For instance, have you ever found yourself pleading with God to help you grow in patience or love for other or some other such thing but then also praying that you can learn those lessons without having to suffer through a difficult trial? We seem to want God to give us the patience but then pray and ask that he doesn’t allow us to find ourselves in trying circumstances that would actually provide the opportunity to develop our patience. We want the results without the struggle and the whole thing has to be somewhat amusing to God. I have to admit that I’ve even found myself praying for God to help me become more humble and then actually momentarily regretting the prayer, because the thought flashes through my mind, “what if God does answer that prayer and humbles me?”

Writing just moths or even weeks before the events of Acts 23 where Paul was arrested in the Temple area after arriving in Jerusalem and preaching the gospel throughout the Gentile lands, Paul wrote the Romans. Included in his incredible letter to the church in Rome are his personal sentiments of his desires to come and see them, strengthen them, and preach the gospel in Rome. Near the end of the letter Paul asks that the believers in Rome pray that “I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution I take to Jerusalem may be favorably received by the Lord’s people there, so that I may come to you with joy, by God’s will, and in your company be refreshed.”

As we saw in chapter 23, God answered the first portions of that prayer in grand and immediate fashion. The contribution that he brought was well received by the believers in Jerusalem and he was certainly kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea as he was escorted by over four hundred Roman soldiers, spoiling a plot by the Sanhedrin to take his life. God had come through in stunning fashion and perhaps Paul thought that the last part of the prayer, to come to the believers in Rome would be just as fantastic and immediate. If that was his thought, Paul would have been wrong.

Paul didn’t just pray to come to Rome but that he would do so with joy and be refreshed. That was his mistake. I’m not implying, of course, that if we word our prayers just right that God will not allow us to go through trials and hard times, but there is a bit of an amusing element to the fact that Paul prayed that when he came to Rome he would be full of joy and refreshment. And then things went crazy. He was imprisoned. He had multiple trials before Felix, Festus, an Agrippa. He was in chains for two years. Then to top it all off, he was battered around in a terrible shipwreck, he had to swim onto land, and when he got there he was bit by a poisonous viper. What was God doing, he might have wondered. All along the way, God kept reassuring him that he would make it to Rome. That might have seemed in doubt at times to any rational person. But wondering what God was doing must have gone through Paul’s mind. He was kept safe in Judea in a faith-building way almost instantly. But what about getting to Rome? Over two years and yet he still wasn’t there and really had very little to show in the way of spreading the gospel because he was imprisoned the whole time.

After shipwrecking on the island of Malta, Paul and the others had been fairly well taken care of by the people there, but it would be three months before the seas were safe enough to attempt completing their journey on an Alexandrian ship that was also wintering on the island and willing to take the passengers with them. After a few quick stops, Paul and the others arrived in Puteoli. There was a small Christian community in Puteoli of which Paul had evidently heard of but had no personal knowledge of. The brothers and sisters there were eager to take care of everyone, presumably including the non-Christian Romans. It’s fascinating to think what must have been going through the mind of Paul’s captors at this point as they enjoyed the hospitality of the Puteoli Christians for a week.

Before reaching Rome itself, the believers in the area in and surrounding Rome did what was common for people to do to a ruler or extremely important person. They went outside of the city itself to meet and greet Paul and escort him back into the city gates. This was a very specific process with a very specific word, apantesis, (a practice alluded to during Jesus’ glorious return in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 when believers will “apantesis” Jesus, meaning to go out greet him and escort him back into the city; see also the only other use of apantesis in the New Testament in Matthew 25:1, 6).

Imagine Paul as he approached Rome and saw the believers there to greet him. His prayers had finally been answered after two agonizing and trying years; two years, it had taken. But imagine the incredible joy that welled up in Paul to finally see the brothers and sisters in Rome. Can you even begin to fathom how refreshed he felt at that moment. There are not many moments of refreshment that can compare with the completion of an arduous and perilous journey and Paul had finally reached that moment. He was still technically a prisoner, but that was small potatoes at this point. God had answered his prayers and been faithful to his promises to bring him to Rome. The believers were there to greet him, indicating that they had received his challenging letter well and had been praying for him as well. The joy Paul felt at that moment must have been overwhelming. You see, God had thoroughly answered his prayer. Paul didn’t just arrive in Rome. He got there and felt unbelievable joy and unmatchable refreshment. God had taken him through incredibly trying circumstances to teach him and train what true trust and genuine joy were all about.

With those incredible details out of the way, Luke seems content to focus on Paul’s dealings with the Jewish leaders in Rome. It makes sense that Paul would immediately reach out to them. He had no idea of what they had heard about him and what the reaction to him being there would be. In fact he may have had some reason for concern as the Emperor Claudius had expelled all Jews from Rome following riots that reportedly had to do with disputes over Christians in Rome. Nero had since become emperor and allowed them back in but Paul would have wanted to avoid any further conflict if possible.

Perhaps to his surprise, the Jewish leaders in Rome did not really know about Paul. They knew about Christianity and they knew that Jews everywhere were deeply opposed to it, but they seemed fairly dispassionate about it. In fact, they were willing to hear Paul out because they had not heard anything negative about him. It is surprising that the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem had not contacted them and sought to make sure that the job against Paul was finished in Rome, but perhaps they felt that to be unnecessary with him appearing before the Emperor. It is simply unknown whether the Jews ever pleaded the case against Paul before the Emperor or not.

Paul assured the Jewish leadership, as he had continued to assert that his gospel was not just an attack on the Jewish people or the Temple, but was a concerned warning of their fate. That is something that Paul wanted to make clear because he well knew Jesus’ prophecies that the Temple would be judged by God and utterly destroyed (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21). He wanted to warn Jews of the coming catastrophe with Rome that would result in those horrific events and proclaim to them that the family of God was no longer found in the nation of Israel and marked by following the law but was found in God’s true son, Jesus Christ, and marked by being baptized into his life in faith. Once again Paul asserted that he had been arrested and thrown in chains for doing nothing more than holding to the true fulfillment of the great hope of Israel, that of God’s people being resurrected.

Paul would get one more chance to proclaim the gospel to the Jews, as we will see in the next section. But he had arrived in Rome with joy. His prayers had been answered and he was being afforded the chance to do the one thing that he desired more than anything else in the world, to proclaim the kingdom of God and King Jesus. That was Paul’s gospel and it was his life.


Devotional Thought
Paul prayed that he would come to Rome in great joy and be refreshed and God answered that through two years of trials and hardship. Do you ever feel that you are going through needless trials in life? Perhaps the problem is not with God or your life but with your perspective. Take some time today to contemplate what God might be teaching you through the trials in your life.