Daily Archives: April 12, 2013

An Explosion of God-Signs

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AN EXPLOSION OF GOD-SIGNS

“Through the work of the apostles, many God-signs were set up among the people, many wonderful things done. They all met regularly and in remarkable harmony in the Temple porch named after Solomon. But even though people admired them a lot, outsiders were wary about joining them. On the other hand, those who put their trust in the Master were added right and left, both men and women. They even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on stretchers and bedrolls, hoping they would be touched by Peter’s shadow when he walked by. They came from the villages surrounding Jerusalem, throngs of them, bringing the sick and bedevilled. And they all were healed.” Acts 5:12-16 (The Message).

This seems like a story from another world, doesn’t it? What made it possible for the power of God to flow so freely in a community no different from our own?

This was no longer a small and insignificant religious movement in Jerusalem. The church had grown to thousands – the initial harvest on the day of Pentecost was three thousand new believers and another five thousand after the healing of the crippled beggar. In spite of the shocking death of Ananias and Sapphire, more believers were added to the church. Almost every chapter of Luke’s record comments on the explosive growth of the church.

No doubt there were many from outside Jerusalem who put their faith in Jesus and carried the message back to their homes. People were flocking to the city from the villages and towns around the capital city to have a share in this mass healing that was happening in the city. With every attack on the apostles came a new wave of believers. Persecution did not slow down the growth of the church but it certainly sifted out those who wanted to be in it for the ride.

Satan’s initial strategy was to try to destroy the church from without. He unleashed a bitter attack from two quarters, religion and politics. The Jewish Sanhedrin tried to flex its muscles against the leaders of the church but that did not work. It only drove the people closer together and kept out the hangers-on like Ananias and Sapphira.

As the church spilled over into the rest of the Roman Empire, it fell foul of the Emperors whose claim to being God was challenged and disproved. Jesus is Lord, not Caesar, and His Lordship was confirmed wherever the church spread by the lives of the believers and the power of God working through them.

The early church functioned under strong leadership and accurate teaching. The apostles were there to guide the ship. It was not a free-for-all. This was not a democracy. Jesus was head of His church and He had appointed leaders who would hear Him and be accountable to Him. The apostles had learned to be followers before they could be leaders. The unity of the church was maintained by humble submission to leadership and by the purging effect of persecution.

Are there some lessons in the history of the early church for us today? There sure are! There are too many self-appointed and self-taught leaders in the church who gather people around themselves instead of connecting them to Jesus.

Perhaps if local churches went back to Jesus’ original call, “Follow me,” and committed themselves to the model of the early church, “…built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.” (Ephesians 2:20, 21 – NIV), we might once again see the power of God fill a pure church and transform communities as He did in the beginning.

Who Is In Charge?

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WHO IS IN CHARGE?

“The religious leaders renewed their threats, but then released them. They couldn’t come up with a charge that would stick, that would keep them in jail. The people wouldn’t have stood for it — they were all praising God over what had happened. The man who had been miraculously healed was over forty years old.

“As soon as Peter and John were let go, they went to their friends and told them what the high priests and religious leaders had said. Hearing the report, they lifted their voices in a wonderful harmony in prayer:…” Acts 4:21-24a (The Message)

This was the acid test for the apostles. How would they respond to this new development? They were enjoying the favour of all the citizens of Jerusalem, believers and unbelievers alike. Now the Sanhedrin was taking them on, just as they had taken on their Master.

As followers of Jesus, they had watched and listened to His response to the irrational rage of the Jewish religious hierarchy. Even when they arrested, tortured and killed Him, He neither resisted nor bad-mouthed them. He was representative of another kingdom which overrode the worldly kingdom they represented.

Peter and John politely listened to the rantings of the religious rulers but made it clear that they had no intention of obeying them. They had a higher authority to which they were accountable and He was backing their obedience by replicating through them what He had done through Jesus.

There was a strong bond between the believers that was not only a unity of faith but also a bond strengthened by sharing their resources and doing life together. When they were in trouble, they had one another’s support in love and prayer. Peter and John went straight back to their ‘family’ to report what had happened and, no doubt, to discuss their response.

Their first recourse was to God. This is a reflection not only of how well they had learned their lessons from following Jesus but also how powerfully the Holy Spirit was leading and transforming them. The old Peter would have reacted as he did in the garden when the soldiers grabbed Jesus. He lashed out with his sword and slashed off Malchus’ ear. That was his natural human instinct, but not any more. The old Peter had been replaced by a new model, an imitator of Jesus.

They had learned from their Master that the kingdom of God, not their earthly circumstances, was central in their lives. Whatever was happening to them was serving God’s purposes in bringing “up there, down here”. That’s how Jesus viewed life. He was never fazed by the imperfections He encountered. They always served a higher purpose — an opportunity for God to put His glory on display.

As leaders of the infant church, it was their opportunity to show their people how to deal with those who stood against them. Retaliate? No! Revenge? No! Resist? No! Stand? Yes. They had their mandate from Jesus. They were to be His witnesses to the world. As they stood firm in their commitment to obey Him, every obstacle would give way through His power in them.

That is the essence of ‘spiritual warfare’ — obedience to the Master in the confidence that His kingdom overrides the kingdom of darkness and will give way because Jesus is Lord.

United as One

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UNITED AS ONE

“While they were praying, the place where they were meeting trembled and shook. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God’s word with fearless confidence.

“The whole congregation of believers was united as one — one heart, one mind! They didn’t even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, ‘That’s mine; you can’t have it.’ They shared everything. The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Master Jesus, and grace was on all of them.” Acts 4:31-33 (The Message)

Talk about miracles! The healing miracles done by Jesus and even the apostles had nothing on what was happening on the inside of these people. Never in the history of mankind after Adam’s fall had so large a group of people lived together in such unselfish harmony for so long as was happening here in Jerusalem. This had to be God.

People start an enterprise with good intentions. They determine their aim, set up their constitution, start with a flourish and things go well for a while. A few months or years down the line, however, things begin to fall apart. People have different ideas about how they want things done; leaders emerge with opposing ideas; a power struggle begins; before long self-will and self-interest erode good intentions and, without a harsh dictator kind of leadership, the enterprise flounders.

What made this group so different? The command centre of their lives was being manned by a power outside of themselves. The Holy Spirit in them was the unifying power. This was God’s plan from the beginning. He made man in His image with the capacity to be one with Him and with each other.

Scientists who believe and propagate the theory of evolution try to persuade us lesser mortals that we evolved upward from animals. In the animal kingdom no creature lives in harmony with other creatures, even of their own species, by choice. What about a hive of bees or a colony of ants, you may ask? Yes, they may exhibit unity but not by choice. They were programmed by their Creator to function as a unit for their survival.

Not so among mammals, There is often a battle for the alpha position and the top dog wears his crown uneasily because there is another aspiring leader waiting in the wings to snatch it from him, often in a bloody battle.

We discern a different atmosphere among the people in the early church. They were not forced to comply by a harsh dictator. They lived together in harmony because two of the most crucial areas of their lives were submitted to Jesus – their wills and their bank accounts. Bring those two ambitions under the Lordship of Jesus and you have the whole person submitted to Him.

Isn’t it true that the most destructive power in the human race is greed for power and money? Where the Holy Spirit is not in charge of a person’s life, this is the motive that drives us. Jesus was the only human being who was free from greed. His life was a perfect mirror image of the Father, gracious, compassionate, generous and merciful. He showed us God who is a giver, not a getter.

Jesus gave us a fool proof test to discern what spirit is controlling a person – their fruit. In this case the fruit of God’s work of transformation was the undeniable miracle of unity. Unity becomes a reality when people are submitted to Jesus and to one another out of reverence for Christ. Greed id replaced by the kind of generosity that touches our hearts and our pockets. Now that’s real power!

Too Late!

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TOO LATE!

“While Peter and John were addressing the people, the priests, the chief of the Temple police and some Sadducees came up, indignant that these upstart apostles were instructing the people and proclaiming that the resurrection from the dead had taken place in Jesus. They arrested them and threw them into jail until morning, for by now it was late in the evening. But many of those who had listened had already believed the Message — in round numbers about five thousand.” Acts 4:1-4 (The Message).

The time of favour was over! Persecution began to rain down on the apostles like lava from an erupting volcano. They were insisting that Jesus was alive and doing miracles to prove it. This ‘routine’ execution of a man the Jewish religious leaders claimed was a blasphemer had backfired on them and now it had come back to haunt them. They thought they had silenced Him and squashed the movement that had sprung up around Him but instead, they had actually poured oil on the fire and it was spreading faster than they could contain it.

What was it in these religious leaders that made them so determined to stamp out the truth and silence their opposition? What is it in any religious organization that is willing to kill to promote their own beliefs? Murder is justifiable in their eyes if they cannot force their beliefs down the throats of their ‘enemies’.

Just as fiercely as God protects man’s right to make his own choices, even to damning himself to the rubbish heap if he so wills, so fiercely do some elements of the human race, and especially in the name of some ‘god’, call it what they will, demand the right to force others to embrace their beliefs or die.

One of the worst elements of Adam’s rebellion against God was the ingrained determination to control other people. It is the root cause of conflict, from conflict between individuals to conflict in homes, in society, in nations and in the world. We all want our own way and we get it at the expense of others.

But why is it that the worst expression of control between people happens over their religious beliefs and practices? More people have perished in religious persecution over the centuries than all the wars put together. That tells us just how deep-rooted this flaw is in human nature.

Some one hundred and fifty million believers died at the hands of the Church during the Inquisition. And what of the people who perished under the Nazi regime, under communism and in countries today where religion is legislated and where to convert is an automatic death sentence?

People who control are often people who were controlled. This produces insecurity expressed in anger which can only be relieved by controlling others. Put this together with an inborn suspicion and hatred for God and you have a recipe for religious persecution. Strong leaders who control become a hierarchy of controllers with enough power to subdue millions through fear. At the root of it all, amazingly, is….money and power. Scratch under the surface of every dictatorship and every autocratic regime and you will find the glint of gold and, of course, money is power!

What these religious persecutors had not bargained for was a group of fearless people who refused to be silenced, even on pain of death, because they were convinced of the truth that Jesus was alive. Nothing could change that. Where lies controlled the people through fear, the knowledge of the truth had set them free from fear and not even the threat of death would shut them up.

For these religious persecutors it was too late; too late to put the lid on something they had inadvertantly opened up by their passion to control.

They Lied and Died!

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THEY LIED AND DIED!

“But a man named Ananias — his wife Sapphira, conniving in this with him — sold a piece of land, secretly kept back part of the price for himself, and then brought the rest to the apostles and made an offering of it.

“Peter said, ‘Ananias, how did Satan get you to lie to the Holy Spirit and secretly keep back part of the price of the field? Before you sold it, it was all yours; and after you sold it the money was yours to do with as you wished. So what got into you to pull a trick like this? You didn’t lie to men but to God.’

Ananias, when he heard those words, fell down dead. That put the fear of God into everyone who heard of it. The younger men went right to work and wrapped him up, then carried him out for burial.” Acts 5:1-6 (The Message).

Jealousy; wanting to be thought generous; looking for approval; what was it that motivated these two people to cook up this plan?

This is the first crack in the apparently ‘perfect’ and idyllic fellowship of the church. In spite of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit, there had to be those in the church who were not really of the church, the hangers on who were in it for what they could get out of it. Satan’s emissaries are everywhere, including within the church.

This story is a frightening reminder of so what Jesus had to say about the power of money and possessions. One wonders why He spoke about money more than any other subject, including things like prayer, the kingdom of God, grace, etc. Because He happened to understand the depth of human greed, He showed us how deeply the love of money is ingrained in the core of our beings.

It was the love of money that kept the rich young ruler away from eternal life. It was his attitude to money that revealed the transformation that had happened to Zaccheus. It is the way we handle our money that reveals the level of our spiritual maturity and will determine our role in the life to come (Luke16). Where our treasure is reveals where our hearts are.

This incident with Ananias and Sapphira is a shocking reminder that God is fully aware of the thoughts and motives that drive us from the inside. It was not the fact that they had money; it was their attempt to manipulate the church’s attitude towards them with their money that caught them out. They were not being genuinely generous; they were being secretly self-seeking by acting generous in front of the church. And God knew and, unfortunately for them, so did Peter through the Holy Spirit.

How often do we not also try to manipulate people’s attitude towards us by acting on the outside what we are not on the inside. This is insincere, to say the least and hypocritical — something which God hates. It is an attempt to make ourselves better than other people. This is a subtle form of idolatry, putting ourselves on a pedestal for people to admire.

It’s even worse when pastors elevate themselves above their congregations; closed doors, unlisted telephone numbers, unapproachable, untouchable etc. What happened to “servants leaders”; “shepherds of the flock”; “examples” etc.?

Once again there is a call to the simplicity of “following Jesus”. He did not live to impress people but to obey the Father and He was NEVER unapproachable.

If you have an “approval addiction”, to quote Joyce Meyer, get help! There is blessed freedom in living to please God and not people.