Monthly Archives: March 2019

THE BOOK OF ACTS – THE STAGE IS SET

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THE STAGE IS SET

“And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person’s need.

“Joseph, called by the apostles “Barnabas” (which means “Son of Comfort”), a Levite born in Cyprus, sold a field that he owned, brought the money and made an offering of it to the apostles.” Acts 4:34-37 (The Message).

These few verses seem like nothing more than a simple bit of information regarding the miraculous life of the new-born church in Jerusalem. It was a miracle because most people without Jesus don’t normally live this way.

Here was a community within a community that did life together in unity. They identified with each other so closely that everyone shared in the joy and suffering of the group. The apostles had a safe haven to go to when things got tough for them outside. Their resources were pooled so that everyone had a share. Those who had shared with those who did not have.

They had to live like that for several reasons: they were expressing the generous nature of the one who lived inside of them. Their disposition was transformed by the power of God from greedy, selfish people to those who willingly and unselfishly served their fellow believers.

They were no longer individuals responsible for themselves and their families. They were now members of a new family held together by their faith in their living Lord. He had shown them how to live and they were following and imitating Him.

They were a community under threat. Like their Master, they had fallen foul of their religious leaders because of what they taught and lived. Their lives and message opposed the legalistic self-righteousness of their leaders and showed up their true nature just as Jesus had done. The church stuck together and supported one another.

In spite of their circumstances, the church flourished and grew. There was something about them and their way of life that drew people to them like moths to a flame. Yet, as idyllic as it sounds, it was inevitable that there would be bad apples in the box. Satan always has his unsuspecting allies who are there to throw a spanner in the works.

These verses conclude the opening chapter of the life of body of Christ, the church, and also form the introduction to a new era in which the rot began from within. Jesus told a parable about a farmer who planted good seed in his field. In the night an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. The new plants looked so alike that the only solution was to let them grow together until the harvest. The fruit would distinguish wheat from weeds.

The church is like that as well. There are pseudo-believers in the mix that seem so genuine that no-one can really tell the difference. But the time does come when their true nature is revealed. The next episode in our story will throw the spotlight on two people who, unfortunately, did not escape the scrutiny of the Holy Spirit in Peter.

There is a message in this story for us. Attachment to the body of Christ does not guarantee true membership. It’s really an issue of the heart. God looks beyond our behaviour to the attitude and motive of our hearts. That’s where our union with Jesus happens and is worked out in our relationships within His body.

MOLLY AND ME – ONENESS

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MOLLY AND ME – ONENESS

How I wish that Molly and I could be truly one…especially on our daily walks! She wants to go her way and do her thing but I’m supposed to be the pack leader. A great part of our walking consists of me pulling her as though she were a trailer with brakes on because she is following scents. When she finds an interesting one which she must investigate, all four of her short little legs dig in and we come to an abrupt stop while she thoroughly checks out the scent. Sometimes, she walks quietly beside me, and at other times, she pulls me as though we were drag racing if there is something interesting ahead.… and I mean “drag” in the true sense of the word.

Of course, I realise that Molly and I have different natures. She is a hunting dog and she was programmed by God-given instinct to investigate, interpret and follow scents. She experiences her world though her senses at ground level. She is also naturally inquisitive and stubborn which makes training somewhat of a challenge. What she learns, she learns well, especially how to train me!

While Molly is programmed by instinct, I have been given the freedom to make choices and decisions which are determined by my world view and the values I embraced as I grew up in my world. I was born with the freedom to choose, but my choices were limited by my sinful nature which the Bible describes as “dead in trespasses and sins”. It was only when I responded to the call of the Holy Spirit to recognise and acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God and to confess Him as Lord that my dead spirit was made alive. From that moment, I was set free from the guilt and power of sin. I could choose to follow Jesus or to follow my fleshly desires. The more I chose to follow Jesus, the less attractive the world and what it has to offer has become.

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever. (1 John 2:15-17 – NLT)  

Just as it was Jesus’ passion, as the Son of God in human flesh, to guard the unity He had with the Father regardless of the cost, so it is becoming my desire to be one with God by choosing to submit to His will rather than insisting on my own.

On my long journey with Jesus of 63 years, I have become more and more aware that union with God is His highest and supreme goal for His children. He is training us, through our lives of ups and downs while we are on this earth, to become like His Son, trusting His love in the bad times and living by the truth of His Word at all times.

My desire for myself, as it is for all God’s children, is that we would become the answer to Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21 (NLT).

I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

As much as I desire it, Molly and I will never be one because we belong to different species, but, on the other hand, oneness with God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are infinitely possible because Jesus was made like us so that we can become like Him.

God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that He should make Jesus, through His suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation. So now Jesus and the ones He makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them His brothers and sisters. (Heb.2:10-11 – NLT)

THE BOOK OF ACTS – 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; begin 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 that God is a giver, not a taker.

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 is replaced by the kind of generosity that touches our hearts and our pockets. Now that’s real power!

THE BOOK OF ACTS – FEARLESS CONFIDENCE

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FEARLESS CONFIDENCE

“A wonderful harmony in prayer: ‘Strong God, you made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. By the Holy Spirit you spoke through the mouth of your servant and our father, David.

“Why the big noise, nations?

Why the mean plots, people?

Earth’s leaders push for position,

Potentates meet for summit talks,

The God-deniers, the Messiah-defiers!”

For in fact, they did meet — Herod and Pontius Pilate with nations and peoples, even Israel itself — met in this very city to plot against your holy servant Jesus, the one you made Messiah, to carry out the plans you long ago set in motion.

“And now they’re at it again! Take care of their threats and give your servants fearless confidence in preaching you Message as you stretch out your hand to us in healings and miracles and wonders done in the name of your holy servant Jesus.'” Acts 4:24b-30 (The Message).

What a prayer! It doesn’t sound quite like the sort of prayer God’s people would pray today, does it? We would pray something like this: “O God, we are under attack! The devil is attacking us. We bind you, Satan, in the name of Jesus. We take authority over you. You have no power over us so take your hands off us. O God, please get us out of this, in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

Prayer is a window into our hearts. When people pray together, they get to know one another pretty well. Compare our kind of praying with the prayer of those early disciples. We pray out of despair. Our focus is more often on the problem than it is on God. We rehearse the problem and beg God to intervene to get us out of it.

Remember Joshua at Ai? He was whining at God because Israel had been defeated and some of their men killed. He thought it was God’s fault for not supporting them. What was God’s response? “Stop praying! Get up! Israel has sinned.”

There is something reciprocal about our prayers and God’s responses. Israel’s defeat was the result of Achan’s disobedience, and prayer was not the solution. The value of Joshua’s prayer lay in God’s response — stop praying and do something about the sin in the camp. Perhaps we need to heed the lesson when we are praying about situations in our own countries.

The believers in this incident got it right. They did not interpret persecution as Satan’s work against them. They viewed it as God’s opportunity to get more glory for Himself by showing His power against the backdrop of puny human opposition. The psalm they quoted contrasted the worst that human power can do with God’s response to the rebellion of men and nations. “I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill…” Psalm 2:6 (NIV).

Their plea was not, “God, get them off our backs,” but “God, let’s do it even more.” What a spirit! They were less concerned about their own comfort and safety than they were about getting the job done. They knew that God was supporting them as they supported Him in His intention to make His Son known.

We in the western world need to recapture the attitude of those first followers of Jesus who were so captivated by Him that they disregarded themselves in their partnership with God to establish His rule on earth. They knew that God would take care of their business if they took care of His.

THE BOOK OF ACTS – 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 it 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 ranting 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! Avenge? 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 which will have to give way because Jesus is Lord.