Tag Archives: set apart

ACTS THE SEQUEL…PREPARATION AND PRACTICE – 26

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“Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.”

‭‭Acts‬ ‭13‬:‭1‬-‭3‬ ‭NIV‬‬

From chapter one, Luke had set the scene for the kingdom of God to spread from Jerusalem into Asia Minor and finally to reach Rome. God had  chosen and prepared His men. The church was firmly established in Israel and Syria, and a slender branch had sprouted in Africa.  The apostles had clearly understood and taught the gospel of grace, linking the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus with the Old Covenant and its prophetic message of salvation to the whole world. 

The moment had arrived…the Holy Spirit moved with clarity and purpose…hand-picking Barnabas and Saul, from a group of leaders in Antioch, for their new task. These two men had been honed through the discipline of hardship and testing, and moulded together into a partnership that would be vitally important as they faced the wall of Jewish and Roman push-back against the gospel. The power of Jewish religion and Roman imperial paganism that seemed like an impenetrable barrier, would stand between them and their calling.

But…they had the Word and the Spirit…and no power on earth or in hell could neutralise their strategy or their weapons, or kill their zeal for Jesus and His church. 

So. the Holy Spirit called…and the leaders answered with prompt obedience. With prayer and fasting, they set Barnabas and Saul aside for the mammoth task that lay ahead of them. Finally, Saul, the soon-to-be Paul…the “little” man…would be let loose on the Roman world, with the explosive message of Jesus, to turn that world upside down. 

Up to this point, it was Barnabas in the lead, and Saul tagging behind, following and supporting Barnabas in their pioneer work of spearheading the mission of the kingdom in a hostile environment. However, slowly…the leadership changed. Saul became the leader and Barnabas the follower because it was Saul…the chosen replacement for the renegade Judas Iscariot…who had fallen from his position in the Apostolic band…who would become the greatest apostle and missionary in the history of the early church. 

The two men…chosen, called, and equipped…set out, with the church in Antioch at their backs, on the first leg of their long and eventful journey into the Roman world, the island of Cyprus their first port of call. 

It wasn’t long before they hit the first obstacle. 

To be continued

ROMANS 1 – CAESAR OR NO CAESAR!

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ROMANS 1 – CAESAR OR NO CAESAR!

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God — the gospel He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding His Son who, as to His earthly life, was a descendant of David and who, through the Spirit of holiness, was appointed the Son of God in power by His resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ the Lord.” Romans 1:1-4.

Jesus had come and gone. He had lived for thirty three years, spent three years teaching, preaching and doing miracles, was executed as a blasphemer and a threat to Rome, rose again and returned to the Father. The disciples were left blinking. What was that all about? How on earth were they to make sense of it all?

Ten days after He left them, the Holy Spirit came, just as Jesus had promised. The light came on and their Old Testament Scriptures began to pulsate with new meaning. Words Jesus had spoken, things He had done, and things that were done to Him began to fall into place.

On the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit invaded the lives of those who were waiting for Him, Peter — the one who had denied Him, the one who had hidden behind closed doors with the other eleven — stood up in the temple packed with worshippers from all over the Roman Empire, as well as the Jewish leaders who had led the charge against Jesus, and shot from the hip.

“Jesus was God’s Son. He proved it by His life and miracles. He died, but He came back to life by the power of God. You did it! You killed Him! But it was God’s plan, and now He has sent the Holy Spirit as He promised.” The crowd was horrified, appalled. Many in the group were there when they demanded His death and they were terrified. “What can we do?” they wailed.

“Repent!” said Peter, “and hand yourselves over to God’s mercy. Join Him, and us, and you will receive the same Spirit as we have.” And many of them did just that — three thousand on that day.

A few years before, in the vicinity of Israel’s “red light” district, Caesarea Philippi, where terrible things were going on in the name of pagan religion, Jesus gave them a commission. “Take my yoke, my disposition of compassion and mercy because of God’s mercy to you and give it to people like these, (referring to the pagans who were having intercourse in public with goats, in the name of their god, Pan). It will transform them and shut down places like this that are spawned by hell.”

Jesus’ yoke, which He placed on His disciples, would have serious repercussions for them in the Jewish and pagan Roman world to whom they were sent. They would clash with Roman and Jewish authorities because Jesus’ radical claims would be an in-your-face challenge to their authority and beliefs. It was the role of the apostles (the sent ones) to interpret Jesus’ life and death, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, according to the Scriptures, and to invite their hearers to believe and to accept His yoke of discipleship for themselves.

In a shocking moment of revelation, one of the most vehement defenders of Judaism, Saul of Tarsus, met this risen Jesus and defected to “the Way” as the followers of Jesus were called. Jesus called him to interpret and proclaim the very message he was trying to stamp out by destroying as many believers as he could.

Paul, who was once Saul, became as ardent a protagonist of the faith he once persecuted as he had been an antagonist. Commissioned by the Holy Spirit, he and his companion, Barnabas, criss-crossed the provinces of Asia Minor and Europe with the message of Jesus. Paul longed to go to Rome, but he had to wait until he was taken there, compliments of the Roman government, to face trial for his “crimes” against the Jews.

In the meantime, a church had sprung up in Rome, thanks to the many unnamed believers who lived the message wherever they went. Paul was anxious that they in Rome understand the gospel because false teachers were everywhere, corrupting the truth with their misinterpretations. These false teachers did not understand Jesus’ yoke and they did not have the authority to interpret it to their hearers as did the apostles. And so, Paul wrote a letter.

With masterful strokes, Paul gave his credentials and painted a picture of the Jesus he was sent to proclaim. Against the backdrop of the arrogant claims of Caesar, Paul presented Jesus’ credentials for being worshipped as “Lord”. Jesus came in fulfilment of prophecy; He was descended from David, a true human; He died but was raised by the power of the Holy Spirit, truly God; authentically the Son of God and declared to be Lord. His full title: Jesus Christ the Lord — fully man, fully God and absolutely supreme, Caesar or no Caesar!

Acknowledgement

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

 

From God’s Perspective

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FROM GOD’S PERSPECTIVE

“But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult with human beings. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.” Galatians 1:15-17.

Why was Paul giving such a detailed description of his life history? Somewhere along the line it was not only his gospel message that was being attacked but also his credentials as an apostle. After all, he was not one of the Twelve. Who gave him authority to preach what he preached and, what’s more, to call down a curse on anyone who preached anything different from his message?

And what a message! He was actually insisting that people abandon the Law of Moses as a way to be accepted by God, and embrace and worship a human being, and one who had been executed by the Roman authorities, as God because He claimed to be God. That did not sit well with the Jews. On top of that, he was inviting Gentiles to have a share in the covenant God made with Abraham, telling them that they were also Abraham’s offspring if they believed in Jesus.

From a Jewish point of view, what Paul was doing was outrageous. However, although he was a Jew, he had another perspective, one that overrode human opinion. What was God’s side of the story?

First of all, He had a plan. Paul’s early life as a fanatical Pharisee, far from being his chosen way of life, was only an interlude and a preparation for the destiny God had prepared for him before he was born. At the precise moment, Jesus broke into his life in a personal encounter which shook him loose from his presuppositions and set him on course for his life work – introducing the rest of humanity to the God who had already revealed Himself to one group of people.

He had gone about it the wrong way because he did not understand the truth but his encounter with Jesus put him right. God was not fazed by his foolish notions and bad behaviour. He was a product of his times, but He did not leave him to perish in his unbelief. Grace stepped in at the critical moment, opened his eyes and turned him around.

Paul had a lot of unlearning to do. Instead of getting it second-hand from the ones who had spent time with Jesus, he set off by himself to learn first-hand from the Master. Where better to be alone with Him than in the desert of Arabia, where his ancestors had had many an encounter with the pre-incarnate Son during their forty-year sojourn in the wilderness?

Paul spent three years – the same amount of time as the other disciples – learning to be a disciple; his own desert “Bible College”, person-to-person with Jesus. It’s no wonder he was so insistent that he had authority to preach what he preached! No one spends time alone with Jesus for that long without being transformed from the inside out, thoroughly purged of all the old wrong thinking. What you think, you become. Paul became an apostle, called and commissioned, for the rest of his life, to be an ambassador for the kingdom of God and for his King.

Notice how he said, “to reveal His Son in me”. The years in Arabia were much more than a time of changing the way Paul thought. They were also a time for changing his attitudes and responses so that he became a completely new man. He spent three years “contemplating the Lord’s glory.” Jesus did not sit down on a rock beside him and teach him his spiritual ABC. By His Holy Spirit He was in him, revealing and leading him into all truth, making real and becoming to him “Christ in me, the hope of glory.”

When Paul left the “sacred halls of learning”, not in a classroom or lecture hall in an esteemed institution, but under the wide open sky, he carried with him much more than knowledge. He carried in him the presence of the Son of God, both his tutor and his model. It’s no wonder that he was so adamant about the truth of his gospel. The author was resident within him, guiding him and speaking through him so that it was always and only truth that he presented to anyone who would listen.

Acknowledgement

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.