Tag Acts

God Overcomes the Green-Eyed Monster

Todd R Leave a comment

In Shakespeare’s play Othello, the evil Iago says the line: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.”[1]

Jealousy can be a monster that takes control of us if we aren’t careful, so since at least 1603, people have been describing this powerful emotion as being taken over by the “green-eyed monster.”  What is this emotion?  Merriam-Webster says we are jealous when we feel “hostile toward a rival or one believed to enjoy an advantage.”[2]  Even though jealousy is a hostile emotion, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,”[3] so He must be able to work through the green-eyed monster.

The first use of the word jealousy in the ESV Bible comes from Genesis 37:11, which begins with: “And [Joseph’s] brothers were jealous of him.”   This jealousy came from the favoritism Joseph’s father Jacob showed toward Joseph over his 11 brothers, but also the dreams Joseph shared where his family was bowing to him.  So, in Genesis 37:19-20, the brothers “said to one another, ‘Here comes this dreamer.  Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we will see what will become of his dreams.’”  But Joseph was rescued and ended up in charge of Egypt’s food supply during a famine, enabling him, through God’s providence, to feed and save the rest of his family.  Therefore, what started as jealousy resulted in Israel’s deliverance from famine.  Joseph tells his brothers: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”  (Genesis 50:20)

Later, in the New Testament, jealousy was a cause of the persecution of the early Christian church.  Acts 13:44-45 says “The next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.  But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him” and Acts 17:4-5 says “And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.  But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd.” (Emphases added)

The apostle Paul was quite aware of this fierce jealousy, but instead of getting upset and annoyed about it, he knew that God would use it for the good of His people.  In fact, while Paul knew his ministry to the Gentiles provoked jealous feelings among Jews, he also hoped jealousy would bring some Jews to faith in Christ: “Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.” (Romans 11:13-14)

But the biggest example of God working through jealousy and its relative, envy, can be found at the cross.  Pharisees and other religious leaders of Jesus’ day were jealous of the crowds that followed Him, of the authority He wielded, and of the miracles He performed.  Therefore, they plotted against Jesus to silence Him, and when they finally seized Him and turned Him over to Pilate, the Roman governor of the region, Matthew 27:18 records that Pilate “knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up.”  What began as jealousy led to the cross and the only way our sins could be paid for was fulfilled!

Jealousy remains a harmful emotion, and God never creates evil in us, but jealous feelings not only resulted in the temporal salvation of Israel from famine and eternal salvation for some Jews in the New Testament, but jealousy also contributed to the crucifixion of Jesus, which made all salvation possible. When Paul wrote “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,” it included God overcoming “all things.”  Even jealousy, the green-eyed monster.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/top-10-phrases-from-shakespeare
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jealous
[3] Romans 8:28

Putting Our Money Where Our Faith Is

Todd R Leave a comment

We often make decisions without really knowing our own motives.  Without really thinking about why we are doing what we do.  However, if we estimate how many of our decisions are based on money from how often the New Testament talks about money, people probably follow financial motives more than they think they do.  Jesus spoke a lot about money, and so does the rest of the New Testament.  Too often our main concern is: will this make us money, or will this lose us money?  This post will briefly look at 3 stories from the book of Acts about money as a motivation.

The first comes from Acts chapter 16.  Verse 16 says, “As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling.”  The Old Testament law clearly forbids fortune-telling (Deuteronomy 18:10), but the owners of this slave seemed to only care that the fortune-telling made them a fortune.  Unfortunately for them, Paul cast the spirit out of the girl, leaving her owners frustrated.  Verse 19 says, “But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers.”  Paul and Silas ended up in prison, eventually to be miraculously freed, and the slave girl’s owners ended up poorer.

The next story comes from Acts chapter 19.  When Paul was in Ephesus and bringing many to Christ in the power of the Spirit, the new disciples gave up their other idols.  In response, a silversmith named Demetrius stirred up some opposition to Paul:

“Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth.  And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.” – Acts 19:25b-27

Did the silversmith care that many were finding salvation in Jesus?  No, he (and his fellow tradesmen) only cared that this new religion was hurting their business profits.  This led to a riot that lasted several hours and had to be quieted by the authorities to keep the Romans from violently intervening.

The last story shows a massive contrast from the first two, and is recorded in Acts 19:18-19, right before the riot in Ephesus occurred.

“Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices.  And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.”

Warren Wiersbe estimated that “The total value of the magical books and spells that they burned was equivalent to the total salaries of 150 men working for a whole year!”  While the money was already spent, these new believers could have sold the items for some amount of money and recovered some of their cost, but they probably thought that if these items were evil, nobody should have them.  The financial cost wasn’t a concern for them.  They just wanted to get rid of things that separated them from God.

What a different perspective!  While the new believers willingly burned expensive objects related to magic arts, the owners of the fortune-telling slave girl and the idolatrous silversmiths were too concerned about money to consider Jesus.

Which perspective do we have?  Do we ever disobey God because we think it will help financially?  Do we ever hold on to things that are spiritually harmful because they cost us money?  Or are we willing to follow Jesus no matter the cost?

Today let’s pray that God will reveal where our loyalties are misplaced and help us to take a step in a better direction!  Let’s pray for the strength needed to follow through and not turn back.

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” – Jesus, in Matthew 6:24

We Don’t Understand God

Todd R 2 Comments

Several chapters at the end of the book of Acts in the Bible detail how Paul was destined to share the Gospel in Rome and how God preserved his life in order for him to get there.  One such story happened when Paul was shipwrecked on the island of Malta.  The people on the ship carrying Paul were welcomed by the people of Malta, but when Paul had gathered sticks to add to their fire, “a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand.” (Acts 28:3). The next verse is where things get interesting:

“When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.””

Notice that “Justice” is capitalized.  Why?  The people weren’t thinking of justice in an abstract, impersonal sense, but this “Justice” in the original Greek was “Δικη”, or “Dike.”  Dike, in Greek mythology, was “the goddess of justice and the spirit of moral order and fair judgement as a transcendent universal ideal”[1]  This “Justice” was personal.  In Greek mythology there were many gods and each of them oversaw or represented some aspect of the world.  In the case of Acts 28:4, the “native people,” instead of seeing Paul’s snake bite as a random event, saw as its cause an intervention by one of their gods against someone who must have deserved justice.

Paul, “however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm.” (verse 5). Seeing this, the people “changed their minds and said that he was a god.” (verse 6).  Because they thought a god was trying to punish Paul, they had to further conclude that Paul was powerful enough to overcome Dike and therefore must be a god himself.  Modern readers know this is all just superstition, but what’s interesting is how superstition builds on superstition.  The belief in one false god led to the belief in another.  This story is an example of lies building on lies.

The tragedy is that this happens far more often than we think.  What we see as a superstitious instinct – bad things happen to people who deserve justice because there is a god of justice – also was (and is) believed by people who claim to believe in the true God.  In John chapter 9, disciples of Jesus asked Him regarding a man blind from birth, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”[2]  These disciples believed in a God of justice, and so when they saw something bad happen, they attributed it to a direct intervention by God against someone who surely deserved it.

Christians believe that God is a God of justice, and yet Jesus corrected His disciples and said, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”[3]  Jesus then healed this blind man, and God was glorified in a way that couldn’t have happened if the man had not been blind.  Likewise, when Paul shook off the snake in Acts 28, God was glorified in a way that couldn’t have happened unless Paul was bitten by a snake.  The lesson is that if something bad happens to someone, it doesn’t mean there is some specific sin in that person that deserves a specific act of justice in the form of punishment.

God’s ways aren’t that easy for us to understand, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”[4]  If we believe God acts in easy-to-understand cause-and-effect relationships that we can see and understand (or even predict) we are just as superstitious as the people who believed in Dike.  And if we believe this, we are more likely to add to this belief just as the people did who thought Paul was a god.  We draw more conclusions from our own false conclusions, thinking it’s “logical,” although our starting point was off.  As Mark Twain wrote: “It’s not what you don’t know that kills you, it’s what you know for sure that ain’t true.”

When Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 said “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” an important point was being made that needed to be repeated: our own logic can lead us down the wrong way, even to death.  Our logic sometimes begins with a misunderstanding of how God works, and often with us thinking we can understand God completely.  We can believe God is just (and it is true that He is), but that doesn’t mean we know everything about how He accomplishes justice in the daily events of our lives and of the world.

So, what do we do about this?  We will never be perfect in this world, but I find that the way to move in the right direction is constant fellowship with God.  Constant prayer, daily Bible study, regular meditation on the Word.  Cultivation of a humble heart that knows it is flawed and can always be made better.  Repeated questioning of why we believe what we believe and do what we do.  Can we trace everything back to His Word?  All of our thoughts and actions?  Do we ask Him to show us where we’re wrong?

Pray that we may know God truly, even though we can’t know Him completely.  That God will better reveal Himself and His will to us, today and every day.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dike_(mythology)
[2] John 9:2
[3] John 9:3
[4] Paul in Romans 11:34, quoting Isaiah 40:13

The Likeness of Christ

Todd R Leave a comment

As told in Genesis, Joseph served Pharaoh faithfully.  Even after being wrongly accused and imprisoned, he served while in prison and eventually rose again to prominence in Pharaoh’s kingdom.  When Pharaoh dreamed of famine, Joseph interpreted the dream, and under God’s direction, came up with a plan to survive it.  “And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?” – Genesis 41:38

In the gospels, Peter and John began as uneducated fishermen, yet they were personally discipled by Jesus for 3 years.  In Acts chapter 4, these former fishermen forcefully proclaim the gospel, and about five thousand people came to faith in Christ.  “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” – Acts 4:13

Pharoah recognized the Spirit in Joseph and people noticed Peter and John were different – do people notice the Spirit in you?  Can they tell you’ve been with Jesus?

“A Christian should be a striking likeness of Jesus Christ.” – Charles Spurgeon

Radical Forgiveness

Todd R Leave a comment

Sometimes in the Bible events are simply recorded without much commentary on their significance, but if we look hard enough, there’s often context somewhere else in the book.  An example of this is Acts 21:8, which says:

“On the next day we departed and came to Caesarea, and we entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with him.”

Here Acts is telling us about one of Paul’s last missionary journeys, and the “we” included a few people, including Luke, the author of the gospel by his name and of Acts, and Paul, who we know as the author of much of the New Testament and as founder of many of Christianity’s first churches.  Luke doesn’t seem to think of the verse above as very significant since he spends so few words on it.  There’s really no further comment on this living arrangement.  However, there’s more to it.

The apostle Paul didn’t always go by that name and if we investigate his past, we uncover more of the meaning in Acts 21:8.  The first time he appears in Acts is as Saul, who presided over the death by stoning of Stephen, a prominent Christian disciple.  After Stephen gave a public sermon to a Jewish crowd in Jerusalem, the crowd took what he said as blasphemy, and then Luke wrote this: “Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.”[1]

While we don’t read of Saul actually casting stones, he approved of Stephen’s death and likely saw it as a great victory because at this time, Saul was a zealous Pharisee and persecutor of the young church.  Just a bit later in Acts (and right before his conversion) we read of Saul “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.”[2]  Saul certainly would have loved to get his hands on one of the 12 apostles, but others close to them would be fine as well.  Killing Stephen, as one of the 7 original deacons of the church, would have pleased Saul.

Who were these deacons?  We learn, also in Acts, that the widows of Greek-speaking Jews (Hellenists) “were being neglected in the daily distribution.”[3]  The apostles had stretched themselves too thin, so distribution of food and other aid was being neglected.  The solution was to name “seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom”[4] as deacons to better handle the distributions, allowing the apostles to focus on their preaching ministry.  These seven men were “Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch.”[5] [bold mine]

So, Stephen, who Saul/Paul was pleased to see martyred, and Philip served together as deacons in the Jerusalem church.  We don’t know if they knew each other before this or how long they served together, but there must have been some kinship there.  Serving together creates bonds of fellowship.  And this brings us back to Acts 21:8.

“On the next day we departed and came to Caesarea, and we entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with him.”

Luke doesn’t describe what was going on in Philip’s head, but from the rest of Acts above we know that Philip was welcoming a murderer into his house who oversaw his associate’s death.  Luke records no tension, no confrontation, no hard feelings.  Just that Paul (no longer Saul) was able to stay with Philip for some time.  What he doesn’t explain is that these two evangelists love Jesus and are able to forgive each other any sin because of the forgiveness Jesus gave to them.  Instead of bitterness, Philip may have instead felt joy that God was able to work so powerfully in Paul’s life.  The former murderer of Christians was now a Christian missionary.

This reminds me of a saying I found online (unsourced):

“The apostle Paul entered heaven to the cheers of those he martyred.
That’s how the gospel works”

In the gospel, all sins others commit against us are forgivable, just as Jesus can forgive us any of our sin because He paid the price for all of them.  In Philip’s case, even though Paul murdered his friend, God gave enough grace that Philip could forgive, and Luke can record Paul moving in without any additional comment.  Also, even Stephen is able to forgive Paul.

It’s hard to love someone if you can’t first forgive them, and we’re commanded to love everyone.  So, is our ability to forgive as radical and complete as Philip’s?  Are we willing to welcome into the church, and into heaven, our worst enemies?  Maybe we have someone specific in mind as we read this who drives us nuts.  Can we forgive them?  For most of us, these are very hard questions, therefore, pray that God can show us more of His grace and enable it to share it with others.  Whoever they are.

We know it’s possible with God’s help.

[1] Acts 7:58
[2] Acts 9:1
[3] Acts 6:1
[4] Acts 6:3
[5] Acts 6:5