Tag Acts

Jesus’ Work Has Just Begun

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The book of Acts, sometimes called the Acts of the Apostles, follows the four gospels in the New Testament and tells the story of the Christian church in its very early days.  Luke, who wrote one of the gospels to “Theophilus”[1], is also the author of Acts, which he begins like this:

“In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach.”

Note that word “began.”  Considering that the book of Luke ended with Jesus’ ascending into heaven[2], why does Luke write in Acts that Jesus “began to do and teach”?  Because what Jesus did before leaving earth was only the beginning.  Jesus’ activity in the gospels was only the start of His mission and story, and now He rules from the right hand of God the Father and continues to “do and teach” through His people by His Holy Spirit.  He will continue to do this for all eternity.

Therefore, Jesus is still personally active in the world.  Are you listening and learning through consistent prayer, Bible study and fellowship?  See what He will continue to “do and teach” through you and His church!

[1] Luke 1:3
[2] Luke 24:51

Bible in a Year: Week of July 29 – August 4

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Fellow travelers:

Below are the chapters to read this week if you’re following along in my Bible in a year schedule, divided into morning and evening readings.  Follow along any way you want: you can just do the evening reading, flip the morning and evening, or read it all.  Whatever works for you and your schedule!  It doesn’t have to be Bible in a Year for everyone.

Monday, July 29
Morning: Acts 1-2
Evening: Joshua 24

Tuesday, July 30
Morning: Acts 3-4
Evening: Judges 1

Wednesday, July 31
Morning: Acts 5-6
Evening: Judges 2

Thursday, August 1
Morning: Acts 7-8
Evening: Judges 3

Friday, August 2
Morning: Acts 9-10
Evening: Judges 4

Saturday, August 3
Morning: Acts 11-13
Evening: Judges 5

Sunday, August 4
Morning: Acts 14-16
Evening: Judges 6

What Wisdom Means to Me

Todd R 1 Comment

I’ve had some sort of working definition of “wisdom” for most of my life.  I think most of us have.  As a teenager, I remember joking that it was the ability to learn from other people’s mistakes.  It sounded teenager-wise, but how do I know what’s a mistake?  Later, I read somewhere about wisdom being something like “skill at living life”.  Also sounds useful, but perhaps vague and worldly feeling.  Even later in life, I started thinking of it as “being able to make decisions based on facts, instead of based on wishful thinking.”  This has been even more useful, but which facts do you follow?  How do you choose between two “true” options?  What if you don’t have all the needed facts?

I think my current definition is better: Wisdom is the ability to choose between the path of righteousness and the path of the wicked.  In the Psalms and the Biblical wisdom literature like Proverbs, there is a contrast between these two paths, and the idea that moral decisions are like choosing a route between places.  You can be on one path or the other, and with wisdom, “you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path”[1]

Moving down a path is an action, and therefore, wisdom is about taking the right action, not about what we know, believe, or say.  It’s not about accumulating facts.  Facts matter, but they aren’t wisdom all by themselves.  Adding the context of the Great Commandments[2], wisdom is what tells us how to love God and others actively, and in a way based on obedience that leaves the results to God.  For example, in the book of Acts, Ananias didn’t minister to Saul, the notorious persecutor of Christians, because Ananias thought it would end up well for himself[3], he did it because God told him to, and God knew that future Saul was Paul, the author of much of the New Testament.  Ananias didn’t decide based on the facts as he knew them, but he adjusted the facts in light of revelation from God.  Also, wisdom might sometimes tell you the best action is to do nothing, to not to do something specific.  Sometimes wisdom flashes a red light while others are flashing green.  “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” – Pr. 14:12 and 16:25.

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

This way of thinking about wisdom explains why the Way, the Truth and the Life must be a Person, not a set of rules or a philosophy.  Truly, only each of us, in our individual relationships with God through the Holy Spirit, can learn wisdom.  Only in a relationship with this Person can we figure out what our purpose and identity in the body of Christ is.  This wisdom is proactive and specific to each of us.  Nobody else’s situation is your situation, and nobody else has the same relationships, abilities, and resources.  Books, advice, and experience can be helpful, but we each need to “taste and see”[4] the Holy Spirit in us, working at our very core where only He can reach, and directing us down the right paths at the right times.

True wisdom will put us on a path that provides us, and this world, a taste of heaven through us.  It is informed by a justice and righteousness – God’s law and Christ’s character – that is not of this world.  With wisdom we can build and create new things on the cornerstone of Christ.  The world might not like it, but the world is not your Creator who is all wise.  Therefore, pray for and seek God’s wisdom as the immensely valuable treasure that it is!

[1] Proverbs 2:9
[2] Matthew 22:37-39.  In short, love God and love your neighbor.
[3] Acts 9:13
[4] Psalm 34:8

God Overcomes the Green-Eyed Monster

Todd R 1 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 mention of jealousy in the 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

He Who Sits in the Heavens Laughs

Todd R 3 Comments

Are you frustrated with politics?  Maybe the politicians you prefer are not currently in power and you are disappointed or angry.  Maybe you are just tired of political divisiveness.  Maybe you are tired of the 24/7 barrage of bad news online and on TV.  There are many ways politics can be draining and rob us of peace and joy, and a lot of it seems very un-Christlike.

One of my favorite Bible passages to read when I feel this way is Psalm 2, which begins with these verses (1-3):

“Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
            against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
Let us burst their bonds apart
            and cast away their cords from us”

The Psalm refers to the rebellion of nations, peoples, kings, and rulers against the “bonds” and “cords” of “the Lord” and “his Anointed”, or God the Father and God the Son.  All nations have always been rivals, not just with each other, but also with the kingdom of God.  Within nations, political parties also have fierce rivalries.

The ultimate example of the nations’ rebellion is referenced when the first two verses from the Psalm are quoted in Acts 4:25-26, followed by: “for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and our plan had predestined to take place.”  The crucifixion of Jesus was the result of a massive conspiracy, including possibly six separate trials by both Jewish and Roman authorities.  The Jews hated Him because He was not the political messiah that would lead an insurrection against Rome.  The Romans, led by Pilate, answered the call to crucify Him, to avoid a Jewish riot that would result in their punishment or removal by higher Roman authorities.  So Jesus, who was not guilty of what He was charged with and also is the only human to never participate in insurrection against His Father, was crucified and died.

Jesus was a threat to Jewish and Roman authority and had to go, and they literally succeeded in killing God.  Brutally.  Imagine if you saw that on the news.  There’s nothing worse than this on today’s news or happening in the world today.  But then Psalm 2:4 tells us:

“He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.”

A Surprising Victory

Surprising even His followers, on the third day, Jesus was resurrected from the dead, and after a few weeks, was raised “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.”  (Ephesians 1:21).  This Jesus is the one laughing in heaven, and He can laugh because He knows any and all nations are no threat to Him and His kingdom.

All rulers and nations opposed to God are doomed to fail, because even killing God was not good enough to keep Him down.  Jesus laughs because He knows His plan will work.  In Matthew 16:18, Jesus told Peter that “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

In Acts 4 above, Peter and John quote Psalm 2 after they were released by the religious rulers of Jerusalem, and they testify that Jesus’ enemies only do “whatever your hand and our plan had predestined to take place.”  Peter and John were eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus and knew that all the powers of the world could not keep Him down.  They knew that Jesus was exalted and laughing at any opposition to Him, and therefore, to them.  They rejoiced that the same God who had resurrected Jesus had freed them from prison!

Therefore, take comfort that Jesus, knowing all the evil and rebellion of the world that we may feel threatened by or anxious about, laughs.  All who challenge God are ultimately powerless even if they once “succeeded” in killing Him.

“He who sits in the heavens laughs” reminds us that Jesus is laughing with supreme confidence at whatever political mess we find ourselves in – He is not threatened, and He is in charge.  We can trust Jesus, our King laughing in heaven, who says: “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” – John 10:28-29.

Amen