Tag Archives: opposition

THE BOOK OF ACTS – POWERFUL NONSENSE!

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POWERFUL NONSENSE!

“When the service was over, Paul and Barnabas were invited back to preach again the next Sabbath. As the meeting broke up, a good many Jews and converts to Judaism went along with Paul and Barnabas, who urged them in long conversations to stick with what they’d started; this living in and by God’s grace.” Acts 13:42-43 (The Message).

For a revolutionary new message, the gospel made quite an impact on the Jews and God-fearers of Pisidian Antioch, so much so that Paul and Barnabas were invited back to preach again the following Sabbath. The after-meeting was longer than the service, a kind of new believers’ class to anchor the converts in their new faith.

What a task and what a leap of faith for these missionaries! They had no Bibles or gospel booklets to leave behind. They could not spend months teaching the new believers. They had no guarantees that these vulnerable new “babies” in the faith would not be corrupted or persuaded to turn back to their old ways. The Holy Spirit was the one they trusted to teach and keep these people true to their new-found faith.

“When the next Sabbath came around, practically the whole city showed up to hear the Word of God. Some of the Jews, seeing the crowds, went wild with jealousy and tore into Paul, contradicting everything he was saying, making an ugly scene.” Acts 13:44-45 (The Message).

On the island of Cyprus, Paul and Barnabas had experienced one isolated incident of opposition from the Jewish magician, which Paul quickly squashed. Now they were up against a deluge of Jewish religious fanatics. Paul could not exactly strike them all with blindness! The odds were stacked against them. What could two men do against an angry mob?

This was the beginning of a tide of opposition and persecution from his own people in Asia Minor and Europe that Paul had already aroused in Damascus and in Jerusalem. What was it in this message that inflamed the Jews instead of attracting them to their Messiah?

According to Paul himself, it was the cross that they could not accept. For both Jew and Gentile the thought of God dying on an execution stake made no sense to them. “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:22-24 (NIV).

Jesus did not come to teach a new philosophy or start a new religion. He came to rescue people from their self-inflicted separation from God through the independence our first father set in motion. He came to show us just what this God is like, the God who is calling us back to Himself, so gracious and loving that He took the punishment for our rebellion on Himself.

Why should the cross be such a stumbling block to both Jew and Gentile? Is it because it is unthinkable that a person should do that for another person, let alone God doing it for people who are at enmity with Him? But He did and, through it He offers free pardon to anyone who will receive Him.

“You see, just at the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for an unrighteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrated His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:6-8 (NIV).

THE BOOK OF ACTS – HEROD ON THE WARPATH

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CHAPTER 12

HEROD ON THE WARPATH

“That’s when King Herod got it into his head to go after some of the church members. He murdered James, John’s brother. When he saw how much it raised his popularity with the Jews, he arrested Peter — all this during Passover Week, mind you — and had him thrown in jail, putting four squads of four soldiers each to guard him. He was planning a public lynching after Passover.

“All the time that Peter was under heavy guard in the jailhouse, the church was praying for him most strenuously.” Acts 12:1-5 (The Message),

Opposition to the church was turning ugly. Up to this point it was a religious struggle but for some reason King Herod chose to get involved. The evidence points to a man who would do anything to gain popularity, even stooping to murder to “suck up” to the Jews. This was the same Herod who tried to get some entertainment out of Jesus when He was on trial for His life.

Having disposed of James to the delight of the anti-Christian Jews, he turned on Peter, planning a public display of his sadistic power after the Passover. Was he suspecting a rescue attempt by the believers? He set a guard out of all proportion to the possibility of one man making a bid to escape!

But there was another power at work which Herod had not taken into account — the church at prayer! While Peter was asleep under guard in the prison, the church was awake and storming the gates of heaven.

One wonders why James had perished but Peter was given time. Is there a powerful lesson in this story for us? Perhaps James’ death caught the church off guard. It was a surprise attack and the church did not have time to mobilise prayer to save him. Peter’s imprisonment, however, bought them time to respond by entreating the intervention of God for him.

Herod might have had a measure of authority on earth but the church at prayer was a power to be reckoned with. Way back in Acts 4, when persecution first broke out against the apostles, Peter and John, the church was learning how to handle the conflict between the kingdom of God and the dominion of darkness.

They engaged the enemy, not flesh and blood but spiritual forces, with the spiritual weapons at their disposal. In Acts 4 we have a record of their prayer — an affirmation that they understood who was in charge, “your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed”, and who was under attack, and an entreaty that He be vindicated through them. If that was the flavour of their prayer then, it would have been the same now.

This was not so much Peter’s life in danger as Jesus being challenged by an inconsequential little human who thought he was in charge. This was the same spirit in the church that energised David to go after Goliath. He saw the heathen giant’s challenge not as merely against the Israelites but against the God whom the Israelites represented. Because the Israelite army did not see it that way, none of them had the courage to take the Philistine champion on. David was not concerned about his own tender age or inexperience. He knew he was covered by the power of a covenant-keeping God!

The Apostle Paul’s experience was a face-to-face encounter with Jesus to answer for his own actions against Him. “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Acts 9:4b (NIV), but he was persecuting the church, not Jesus, so he thought. Likewise, Herod had unwittingly taken Jesus on by attacking church leaders and history would prove that he would come off second best.

The church understood that Jesus identified with His Body so closely that any attack on them was an attack on Him. Prayer that engages God with the right motive, to promote and uphold His honour, is the most powerful force in the world. God will do whatever it takes to intervene for His own sake because His mercy is His glory on display.

Discipline Versus Punishment

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DISCIPLINE VERSUS PUNISHMENT

Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you completely forgotten the word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his sons? ‘My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the ones He loves, and He chastens everyone He accepts as sons.’ (Heb. 12: 3-6).

How important it was for his readers to fix their eyes on Jesus! Like Peter walking on the water, the turbulent circumstances around them caused them to waver and to lose confidence in their Master and in themselves and their resolve and ability to follow Him, no matter what. As His disciples, they knew that their relationship with Him was far closer than mere admirers. To be a disciple was to learn to become just like their rabbi, to live like him and to imitate him in everything he said and did.

By turning away and going back to the yoke – the teaching and way of life – of a lesser rabbi, they were in effect saying that they no longer believed that Jesus was most authoritative rabbi to follow. They were declaring, by their defection, that His life and teachings were no longer authentic for them, and repudiating their right to be called sons of God.

By doing that they had forgotten the reality of who they were. If they regarded the suffering they were undergoing as believers in Jesus as punishment for their sins, they had missed the truth of the radical change that had happened when they believed and received Jesus as their Messiah and Saviour. They were no longer slaves but sons.

The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by Him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children (Rom. 8:15).

Slaves had a different relationship to their master from sons. Slaves did not belong in the family. They did not share the name or the inheritance of sons. They lived in fear of punishment if they did not comply with the master’s orders. They could be beaten or even killed if they disobeyed.

‘You are not slaves, but sons’ the writer reminded them. The troubles they were experiencing were not punishment for sin as they might have erroneously viewed them. God has dealt with sin, once and for all, in the death of His Son. The writer had taken pains to explain to them that Jesus’s once-for-all, never-to-be-repeated sacrifice had taken care of sin forever. Unlike the sacrifices of the old covenant which had to be repeated again and again as a reminder of sin, the blood of Jesus had perfected them forever and they were now undergoing the process of being made holy.

Their hardships were not punishment but discipline. Punishment was for slaves; discipline was for sons. Punishment was retribution for doing wrong; discipline was correction to point them towards becoming true sons in their attitudes and behaviour.

How important it is for us to understand what God is doing in our lives when we go through the pain and hardships that don’t make sense and seem to indicate that God is either absent or doesn’t care! “The problem of suffering” has troubled both believers and unbelievers from time immemorial. Books and sermons abound; solutions are offered or denied.

Two facts must never be ignored; we live in and are part of a fallen world – we cannot evade the effects of sin and the suffering which sin brings; we are God’s children – He uses every experience we go through to mould us into the likeness of Jesus.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (Rom.8:28-29).

How else can God reveal the remnants of the old nature in us if He does not allow us to experience the circumstances that trigger our sinful responses? Because we don’t understand what He is doing, we mistrust or blame Him. Instead of growing in grace, we waste the opportunities to imitate Jesus. He endured opposition from sinners because His eye was on the reward. If we keep our eyes on the prize instead of bewailing our suffering, like Jesus we shall endure, persevere and, in the end, inherit God’s promises.

What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’ – the things God has prepared for those who love Him – these are the things God has revealed to us by His Spirit (1 Cor. 2: 9-10).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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