Epistle for January 7, 2024 Baptism of the Lord

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Acts 19:1-7
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This passage is sometimes called the mini-Pentecost. This is a description of the coming of the Holy Spirit among Greek believers in Ephesus some years after the original Pentecost in Jerusalem.

This outpouring of the Spirit happens because of a doctrinal misunderstanding about baptism.  Apollos, who is a Jew from Alexandria and a recent convert to Christianity, has been preaching in Ephesus.  Although his doctrine of salvation by faith is fundamentally sound, his understanding of baptism is a bit off.

He has been preaching a baptism of repentance, as practiced by John the Baptist, not baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus.  Consequently they had not received the full benefit of their faith, which included receiving the Holy Spirit.

When they were baptized in the name of Jesus, and the apostle laid hands on them and prayed, the Holy Spirit came upon them. They then received the manifestation of spiritual gifts of tongues and prophecy.

The baptism of John into repentance was understood as a kind of preparation for the coming of Christ.  However, now that Jesus has been made manifest as Savior and Lord through his life, teaching, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension, it has been made clear that he is the Christ.

At the beginning of each of the four Gospels John is introduced as a preparatory figure, who is “paving the way” for the Messiah.  And in Luke 3:16, John had promised:

I indeed baptize you with water, but he comes who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to loosen. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.

Through baptism into Jesus, these disciples receive the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and, metaphorically, the spiritual fire.

APPLY:  

The doctrine of baptism can be very confusing in the church today, just as it was to the Ephesian converts. Is it a sign of repentance, or new birth, or the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, or a symbol of death and resurrection? And the answer is— Yes! — to all of those questions!

And what is the proper method of baptism?  That question is usually a prelude to what can be a pretty divisive discussion.

What is really significant about this is that water baptism must be understood as a sign of the purifying and empowering work of God. What really matters is what God does through the Holy Spirit.

A person may be baptized as an infant or as an adult, and yet neither one of them may experience the fullness of the experience of the Holy Spirit until their hearts are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here is an analogy — Paul compares baptism to circumcision in Colossians 2:11-12. He says that baptism is comparable to:

a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

But Paul also points out that the only true circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit (Romans 2:29).

In other words, the power of baptism lies in what God does in our hearts, not merely that we have been dunked in a creek, or had some water put on our heads.

The baptism of the heart and the work of the Holy Spirit in us is what really matters.

The comfort we take from this passage is that the Holy Spirit continues to be poured out, just as he was at Pentecost, and later in Ephesus, throughout the book of Acts, and in the life of the church these last 2000 years.

RESPOND: 

I live in a diverse Christian culture, with many interpretations of the act of baptism.  I think it is possible that each of them have a part of the story. The Methodists are right in thinking that baptism is a sign of our acceptance by God and his work in our lives even when we are too immature to understand what it means.  But the Baptists are also right in believing that we must appropriate this gift by faith.  Baptism, whether it is administered to a child or to a more mature believer, is only as powerful as the receptivity of that individual to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in their lives through faith.

Our Lord, cut through our confusion and our fussing about baptism, and pour out your Holy Spirit on all of your church, that we all may be the believers and the world changers you mean for us to be.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
“Baptism” uses the following photo:
“Splash” by Earl Wilkerson is available at freeimages.com.

Epistle for February 12, 2023

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Paul is very blunt with the young church at Corinth.  He tells them that they are still immature in their faith and understanding — they are babies in Christ.

He continues this metaphor, pointing out that when he taught them Christian doctrine he had to feed them milk, not meat.  Like babies, they weren’t ready to digest “solid” doctrine.

Paul then supplies evidence to prove that they were too immature for the deeper things of God, and are still too immature — they are fussing with one another!

For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men?

The prime example of the factionalism at Corinth is their cliquishness and division into groups loyal to their favorite preachers — Paul and Apollos.

This gives Paul the opportunity to clarify the relationship of preachers to Christ:

 Who then is Apollos, and who is Paul, but servants through whom you believed; and each as the Lord gave to him?

He also is able to explore the different roles of preachers and apostles in Christian ministry:

I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase.

Paul is able to differentiate the stages of a vital ministry, and also anticipates the variety of spiritual gifts that he will describe later in this same letter:

There are various kinds of service, and the same Lord. There are various kinds of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the profit of all (1 Corinthians 12:5-7).

But ultimately, the focus is to be on God who works through his servants and who gives the increase:

So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.

He also makes clear that there is no superiority or subordination of planter or waterer — they both receive a reward based on their work.

Finally, Paul returns to his agricultural metaphor, and adds a metaphor from the world of construction:

For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building.

Paul makes it clear that he labors for the church because the church belongs to God, even if its members are still immature.  He is rooting for them to grow up into the church God intends them to become.

APPLY:  

One of the goals of the Christian life is growing up.  The Apostle Peter uses language very similar to Paul’s metaphor:

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation (1 Peter 2:2).

All Christians begin as spiritual babies who need to be nurtured carefully so they can grow up in faith.  Paul’s frustration is that the Corinthians are acting immaturely — fussing and fighting with one another instead of humbly admitting what they don’t know.  Such factionalism is a symptom of spiritual immaturity.

Paul makes it clear that the source of our Christian growth and maturity is not our favorite pastor, or some extraordinary preacher — the only task of a pastor, preacher, evangelist or teacher is to serve God, whether they are planting or watering in God’s garden.  God gives the growth.

The focus, both for the preacher and the people, is to make the “main thing the main thing” — the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

RESPOND: 

Over the years as a pastor, I have noted a long succession of plans and programs that were designed to “help the church grow.”  “Church growth” was the battle cry in my denomination, and we used various metrics to measure growth.

Some of these programs were actually helpful.  But over time it has become clear to me that the role of the pastor/preacher is not to “grow” the church.  The role of the pastor/preacher is to humbly serve God, preach the Gospel, and get out of the way!

We may plant.  We may water.  But it is God who gives the increase.  One layman in my congregation said something very wise that I never forgot — “What good does it do for the church numbers to grow if the church members don’t grow with it?”

Lord, you call us to grow in grace as individuals and as a church.  Help us to focus on your Gospel, and not pick sides on issues and personalities in the church, so that we may become what you mean for us to become.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"1 Corinthians 3 verse 6" used this photo:
"rice stages, seed germination" by IRRI Photos is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for February 5, 2023

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
1 Corinthians 2:1-12, 13-16
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This is the Apostle Paul’s personal apologia ­— a defense of his message and character.  It would seem, from a review of 1 & 2 Corinthians, that Paul has come under fire by a faction in the Corinthian church.

In this passage, he reminds the Corinthians that he came to Corinth with no pretentions to:

excellence of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.

We are instantly reminded of two things:

• The Greeks were famous for their fascination with eloquence and philosophy.
• Apollos, a Jewish convert to Christianity from the cultured and sophisticated city of Alexandria, was well-known for his brilliant eloquence.

Paul, however, focused simply on the straightforward message of the cross:

 For I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

What was central to Paul’s message were not his own words, or his own character, but only Christ.  For Paul, the message of the cross is the pivotal point of the Gospel.  The life and teaching of Jesus lead to the cross, and the resurrection occurs as the result of the cross.  He will remind them later in his letter:

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Some translations more emphatically say that this message was of first importance (1 Corinthians 15:3, NRSV). 

Of himself, Paul is self-effacing.  He is essentially saying “I am of no importance. Christ and his message are of utmost importance.”  He declares that he preached to them:

in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.

Paul’s low self-image seems odd when contrasted to his boldness as described in the book of Acts, or even his personality as revealed in his letters. Some speculate that he alludes here to a possible physical affliction, his thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7) that may have flared during his tenure in Corinth.   Or perhaps he had been chastened by his recent supposed setbacks in Athens (Acts 17).

I’m not sure it is necessary to read so much into his self-deprecation.  He is making the point that the success of his preaching and ministry derives not from himself but from God:

 My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith wouldn’t stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

As Paul will again insist in his second letter to the Corinthians:

For we don’t preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake….But we have this treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves (2 Corinthians 4:5,7).

Having said all of this, however, Paul makes it clear that the Gospel is not naive or simplistic — rather, it is the spear-point of the mysterious wisdom of God:

We speak wisdom, however, among those who are full grown; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing. But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory, which none of the rulers of this world has known.

This wisdom, given only to those who are spiritually mature, transcends worldly wisdom and political power.  Paul is reiterating what he claimed in the previous passage (1 Corinthians 1:18-25), that even God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest human power, and God’s supposed foolishness is wiser than all human knowledge.

As evidence for the ignorance of the rulers of this world, Paul points out:

had they known it, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory.

The mystery of God’s wisdom, hidden from human understanding and yet woven into the very fabric of the universe, has begun to be revealed.  This is a spiritual reality that human senses and intellect are unable to perceive, but is only revealed by God.  Paul quotes Isaiah 64:4:

But as it is written,
“Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear,
which didn’t enter into the heart of man,
these God has prepared for those who love him.”

Paul begins to explore the unique work of the Spirit of God, which he has earlier said reinforced his preaching with the:

demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

And it is the Spirit who reveals God’s wisdom, and who searches both the deep things of God and the Spirit of human beings:

For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.  For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except God’s Spirit. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God.

Part of Paul’s understanding of the work of the Spirit is that the Spirit is a kind of liaison between God and human beings.  Note that the Spirit is God — Paul uses the phrase God’s Spirit and speaks of the Spirit which is from God.  He elaborates on this in Romans 8 when he describes how the Spirit dwells in us and testifies to our own spirits that we have become children of God through faith, and even penetrates the very mind of God and our own spirits through prayer:

 He who searches the hearts knows what is on the Spirit’s mind, because he makes intercession for the saints according to God (Romans 8:27).

I prefer the translation from the NRSV:

And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

APPLY:  

Although Paul protests that he came to the Corinthians without excellence of speech or of wisdom, I think he protests too much!

In this passage, he explores the mystery of grace, hidden from the foundation of the ages yet now revealed fully in Christ.  In this passage we see Paul explore the work of the Trinity, without ever using the term.

The power and wisdom of God the Father are revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and are declared through human preaching.  But it is not the preaching in and of itself that has power to save — it is the demonstration of the Spirit and of power that drives the message home.

God’s mysterious wisdom and power are disclosed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and then confirmed in the human spirit through the Spirit of God.  This is a wisdom not of this world, disclosed to people who respond in faith and grow into the maturity of grace.

RESPOND: 

I remember when I first stood up in a pulpit to preach the Gospel, so many years ago.  How I identified with the Apostle Paul!

I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.

I confess that more than 40 years after my first sermon, which lacked all eloquence and wisdom, I still experience weakness, fear and trembling when I preach — until I remind myself that I am preaching Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 

I resolved long ago to always focus on the message of Christ and about Christ in every sermon — whether it was a sermon based on an Old Testament text or a New Testament text.  This doesn’t mean I do damage to the integrity of the text and import meaning that isn’t there.  No, what it means is that Christ is the key to understanding the entire Biblical witness, and that through the witness of the Holy Spirit, that key is placed in our hearts to open the mystery of God’s power, wisdom, grace and love.

Lord, wherever I go enable me to disappear so that you may appear.  Help me to share the Good News of Jesus Christ so that there is a demonstration of your Spirit and power. Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"Corrie Ten Boom Quote" by the Corrie Ten Boom Museum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for January 22, 2023

Divided loyalties are like fractures in a smooth vase that will crack and eventually break into many shards.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Paul gets down to nitty gritty details with the Corinthians.  He hears reports that this church, that means so much to him, is dividing into factions.  He appeals to the church:

through the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfected together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

There is evidence here of one of the distinguishing characteristics of the early church — the house church.  Paul speaks of hearing reports from Chloe’s household about the contentions in the Christian church.  Household church meetings for prayer and worship are regarded as the prototype for Christian ecclesiastical life in the early church. It may well be that Chloe’s household was such a house church.

But this is incidental to Paul’s real concern, that there are factions and divisions that are developing.  The factionalism falls along the lines of loyalty to various Christian leaders:

Now I mean this, that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” and, “I follow Christ.”

The last group, claiming to follow Christ seems odd.  Paul, of course, was the founder of the church at Corinth, and their first teacher.  Apollos was a gifted preacher who also had preached in many of the same churches as an evangelist that Paul had founded as a missionary.  Cephas, of course, is known more familiarly as Simon Peter, who became in time the de facto leader of the early church with the exception of James the brother of Jesus, who presided over the church in Jerusalem.

Were they not all followers of Christ?  Perhaps the group claiming to follow Christ was staking out a sense of superiority, that they were in fact the true followers of Christ?  As we see throughout Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, there was a faction within the church that had a superiority complex.

Paul’s response to this factionalism is impassioned.  He asks a series of rhetorical questions which each suggest one clear answer — no:

 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul?

Paul’s insistence is that the church is to be centered around one person — Jesus Christ — not around Paul, Apollos or Cephas.

Paul elaborates on his own role as a missionary to the Corinthians for the sake of clarity:

 I thank God that I baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one should say that I had baptized you into my own name.

The issue for him is not whether or not he had baptized anyone — he remembers baptizing the household of Stephanas, but can’t remember baptizing anyone else.  Rather, the issue for Paul is that he doesn’t want followers!  His only mission has been to preach Christ.  Paul seeks to make followers of Christ, not followers of himself:

For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Good News—not in wisdom of words, so that the cross of Christ wouldn’t be made void.  For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are saved it is the power of God.

Although Paul is careful not to criticize Apollos or Cephas, there may be a subtext that only an insider would get.  He says that his role was not to preach the wisdom of words, but only the cross of Christ.  We know from the book of Acts that Apollos was an Egyptian Jew from Alexandria — which was renowned as the second greatest city of the Roman empire after Rome itself, and a center of commerce and of Hellenistic learning and culture.

Apollos was already famous for his eloquence (cf. Acts 18:24), and his bold preaching in the name of Christ.  However, it became necessary for him to be instructed more accurately about the details of the Gospel:

He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside, and explained to him the way of God more accurately (Acts 18:26).

Note that Paul isn’t deriding Apollos’ eloquence, but he is stating very clearly that the message of the cross doesn’t require eloquence.  The cross seems like folly to those who fail to grasp their own sinful nature and helplessness, but those who are saved recognize the cross as the powerful means of grace and salvation.

APPLY:  

We are wisely cautioned about over-idealizing the early church.  Although it was a time of heroic risk and bold proclamation, the early church has much in common with the church today — it was comprised of people!

Many of the same issues that confronted the Christians in this young church in Corinth also confront us today.  And the issue that Paul addresses in this passage is just as relevant to us.  Paul decries the factions that have begun to appear.  These divided loyalties are like fractures in a smooth vase that will crack and eventually break into many shards.

His solution to the factionalism and divisiveness that he sees is the same that ours must be — Christ is not divided, and we shouldn’t be divided either.

We must focus on the central message of the Gospel that unites us as Christians — the cross of Christ. 

RESPOND: 

This passage seems all too relevant to many of our churches today.  The Christian church, though comprised of perhaps 2.2 billion people — a third of the world’s population — is divided into a confusing number of denominations and non-denominational groups.

My own church is facing a possible schism in the next few years.  Issues of Biblical interpretation, doctrine, mission and morality are tearing at the very fabric of my denomination.

My response to these divisions is somewhat layered and nuanced:

First, I advocate the same response that Paul does to the possibility of division — Is Christ divided?  The answer, of course, is no. We are told in Ephesians 2:13-16:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in the flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility thereby.

What Paul describes here is the radical work of Christ to break down the divisions between Gentiles and Jews, and to unite both as one through his redemptive ministry.  However, I believe this unity transcends the divisions in the early church, and applies to the union of people of all races, nations, tribes, and even denominations.  If we can come together in Christ, we will find the true unity that the Scripture tells us is our destiny.

Second, there is the reality that there are often serious differences of interpretation among Christians.  Sometimes those differences are, sadly, irreconcilable.  I cleave to an ancient formula for the sake of reconciliation — “Unity in the essentials, liberty in the non-essentials, love in all things.”

However, there are times that the differences are so great that Christians cannot simply ignore those differences with integrity.  Curiously, though Paul decries the divisions that threaten the Corinthian church, he also recognizes that such divisions are inevitable, and may in fact have a beneficial effect:

For first of all, when you come together in the assembly, I hear that divisions exist among you, and I partly believe it.  For there also must be factions among you, that those who are approved may be revealed among you (1 Corinthians 11:18-19).

The word translated as factions is the Greek word hairesis — which is the etymological word often translated as heresies.

So, although we may seek unity in Christ, there are threats to the faith that must be addressed.  Jude 3-4 puts it this way, when he writes of threats to the faith:

Beloved, while I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I was constrained to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.  For there are certain men who crept in secretly, even those who were long ago written about for this condemnation: ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into indecency, and denying our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Christian unity cannot come at the expense of doctrinal truth and moral integrity.

Lord, the forces that tear at the church today come not only from the outside but also from the inside of the church.  Keep us focused on you and your truth, and enable us to always speak the truth in love. Amen. 

PHOTO:
“small wheel thrown vase – 2008” by Zhao Shouren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Reading from Acts for May 29, 2022

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Acts 16:16-34
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

This week’s lectionary readings do not focus on the Day of Ascension.

Ascension Day always falls on the Thursday forty days following Easter Sunday.

If you prefer to use the Day of Ascension Scripture for this Sunday, click here for “The Reading from Acts for May 28, 2017”.

OBSERVE:

Even Apostles are human, with very personal idiosyncrasies.

Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke are in Philippi.  They have already begun to make converts in this Roman city — Lydia and her whole household have been baptized.

And evidently, Paul’s preaching and presence are a threat to the demonic powers.  The slave-girl, whose spirit of divination is exploited by her owners for financial gain, begins to harass Paul.

What is curious about this passage is that she isn’t necessarily saying anything that is untrue.  Her message is fairly accurate:

“These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

We read that Paul is annoyed when she keeps on trailing them and “outing” them.  But why is he so annoyed?  Is it because her motives are not good? Or is it because she is being exploited by her masters?  Is it because her message is only a half-truth — after all, Paul is offering the way of salvation?  In any event, he does something about it:

 Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.

So, it is one thing to confront someone’s religion; it is another to take away their gravy train!  Paul’s exorcism removes the slave owners’ lucrative and easy source of income!

They drag Paul and Silas into the marketplace and charge them with a kind of religious sedition.  Their complaint is that:

“…they are Jews  and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.”

This is interesting, because these missionaries are not persecuted for their Christian faith but for their Jewish customs!  We are reminded that although Judaism was somewhat protected by Roman laws, and Jews were exempted from military service, there was nevertheless a good deal of antipathy toward Jews by the Roman authorities.

As so often happened in those times, it didn’t take much to gather a mob and incite a riot:

The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods.

Needless to say, legal due process was not followed at all. They were arrested and imprisoned without trial:

After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

Paul and Silas respond to their adversity with faith and worship:

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.

What happens next is significant.  An earthquake rips open the bars of this maximum security prison.  We are not told if this is a supernatural response to the prayers of these missionaries, but it would seem logical to draw that conclusion.

The jailer, who is personally responsible for his prisoners, fears that they have done the obvious thing when this opportunity arises and had fled the scene.  Fearing the consequences from his Roman superiors, he draws his sword to commit suicide — until Paul intervenes:

 Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”

We can only imagine the dread of Roman torture that the jailer may have felt for himself and his family.  He is so relieved that Paul and Silas have not escaped that he is deeply moved:

The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Surely the calm faith of these missionaries in the face of their arrest, their joyful worship even in the dreadful conditions of a prison, and their sensitivity to the jailer’s plight, have all been a powerful witness to the jailer.  Paul displays an acute awareness of the concerns that this jailer must have had.

But he also knows what he really needs:

“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”  They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.

What a change in demeanor the jailer experiences!  He washes and dresses the wounds that Paul and Silas had sustained when they were flogged, and he and his whole household are baptized.

We see again that conversion in the early church was often corporate.  Whole families followed the example of a family member and became Christians. Just as Lydia’s whole household had been baptized, so the jailer’s household is baptized:

 He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

APPLY:  

Saints are people too.  Paul could be annoyed, and yet he could also be very sensitive to the needs of others.

The girl who was possessed by a spirit of divination was obviously possessed by a demon.  Paul’s motive for casting the demon out of her seems to be personal pique rather than compassion.

But before we judge his motives, we must consider the chain of events that the exorcism initiates.  The girl’s owners predictably blame Paul.  They incite a riot against these “Jews” who are threatening their own livelihood.

This is a reminder to us that our acts of compassion must be weighed carefully.  There will be consequences that we may not be able to control.

Missionaries who have gone into other cultures have learned that attacking the cultural mores of their host country may be very controversial.  The wise missionary must pick their time and place before challenging established belief systems and practices.

But when Paul and Silas are arrested, Paul puts into practice what he declares in Philippians 4:11-13.

I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

When the opportunity to escape presents itself, Paul doesn’t see this as a providential excuse to run away.  Paul is aware that the jailer will face serious consequences if his prisoners are missing.  So, he and Silas praise God despite the earthquake, and inspire a response of faith by their witness.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Paul was actually a Roman citizen.  The next day, when the Roman authorities discover they have flogged a Roman citizen and incarcerated him without due process of law, they are terribly worried.  They come cringing to Paul with apologies for having violated his civil rights.

Paul adapts to his circumstances, and uses his unique background for the advancement of the Gospel.  We must do the same with our circumstances and our own background.

RESPOND: 

Every encounter can be an opportunity for ministry if we allow God to use those moments.

When workmen come to the house for one reason or another, I figure God has given me a captive audience.  I will engage them in conversation about their craft, and let it slip that I’m a preacher.  And I try to be very personable, ask them about their work and family.

But quite often the conversation will turn to the “big issues” of life — good and evil, morality, marriage and divorce, the meaning of life.  And that gives me a golden opportunity in a non-threatening way to make a witness by talking about my faith, and what Christ means to me.

I don’t usually have the opportunity to “close the deal” and lead them to Christ.  To be honest, I’m not really great at that.  But I have had the opportunity to plant seeds.

Paul himself said of the work of evangelism that it is a process.  He says of his own ministry and that of another missionary named Apollos:

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.  So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6-7).

Like Paul, I need to look for opportunities to evangelize — even if I may be annoyed, or find myself in adverse circumstances!

Lord, I pray for opportunities to share your story with others. If I only watch for them, and then engage people in conversation about their lives, those opportunities often arise. Give me the wisdom and the “want-to” so that I may bear witness to you wherever I go.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein" by Erin (Quotes) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for January 10, 2021

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Acts 19:1-7
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This passage is sometimes called the mini-Pentecost. This is a description of the coming of the Holy Spirit among Greek believers in Ephesus some years after the original Pentecost in Jerusalem.

This outpouring of the Spirit happens because of a doctrinal misunderstanding about baptism.  Apollos, who is a Jew from Alexandria and a recent convert to Christianity, has been preaching in Ephesus.  Although his doctrine of salvation by faith is fundamentally sound, his understanding of baptism is a bit off.

He has been preaching a baptism of repentance, as practiced by John the Baptist, not baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus.  Consequently they had not received the full benefit of their faith, which included receiving the Holy Spirit.

When they were baptized in the name of Jesus, and the apostle laid hands on them and prayed, the Holy Spirit came upon them. They then received the manifestation of spiritual gifts of tongues and prophecy.

The baptism of John into repentance was understood as a kind of preparation for the coming of Christ.  However, now that Jesus has been made manifest as Savior and Lord through his life, teaching, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension, it has been made clear that he is the Christ.

At the beginning of each of the four Gospels John is introduced as a preparatory figure, who is “paving the way” for the Messiah.  And he had promised in Luke 3:16

I indeed baptize you with water, but he comes who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to loosen. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.

Through baptism into Jesus, these disciples receive the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and, metaphorically, the spiritual fire.

APPLY:  

The doctrine of baptism can be very confusing in the church today, just as it was to the Ephesian converts. Is it a sign of repentance, or new birth, or the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, or a symbol of death and resurrection? And the answer is— Yes! — to all of those questions!

And what is the proper method of baptism?  That question is usually a prelude to what can be a pretty divisive discussion.

What is really significant about this is that water baptism must be understood as a sign of the purifying and empowering work of God. What really matters is what God does through the Holy Spirit.

A person may be baptized as an infant or as an adult, and yet neither one of them may experience the fullness of the experience of the Holy Spirit until their hearts are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here is an analogy — Paul compares baptism to circumcision in Colossians 2:11-12. He says that baptism is comparable to:

a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ;  having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

But Paul also points out that the only true circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit  (Romans 2:29).

In other words, the power of baptism lies in what God does in our hearts, not merely that we have been dunked in a creek, or had some water put on our heads.

The baptism of the heart and the work of the Holy Spirit in us is what really matters.

The comfort we take from this passage is that the Holy Spirit continues to be poured out, just as he was at Pentecost, and later in Ephesus, throughout the book of Acts, and in the life of the church these last 2000 years.

RESPOND: 

I live in a diverse Christian culture, with many interpretations of the act of baptism.  I think it is possible that each of them have a part of the story. The Methodists are right in thinking that baptism is a sign of our acceptance by God and his work in our lives even when we are too immature to understand what it means.  But the Baptists are also right in believing that we must appropriate this gift by faith.  Baptism, whether it is administered to a child or to a more mature believer, is only as powerful as the receptivity of that individual to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in their lives through faith.

Our Lord, cut through our confusion and our fussing about baptism, and pour out your Holy Spirit on all of your church, that we all may be the believers and the world changers you mean for us to be.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
“Baptism” uses the following photo:
“Splash” by Earl Wilkerson is available at freeimages.com.

Epistle for February 16, 2020

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Paul is very blunt with the young church at Corinth.  He tells them that they are still immature in their faith and understanding — they are babies in Christ.

He continues this metaphor, pointing out that when he taught them Christian doctrine he had to feed them milk, not meat.  Like babies, they weren’t ready to digest “solid” doctrine.

Paul then supplies evidence to prove that they were too immature for the deeper things of God, and are still too immature — they are fussing with one another!

For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men?

The prime example of the factionalism at Corinth is their cliquishness and division into groups loyal to their favorite preachers — Paul and Apollos.

This gives Paul the opportunity to clarify the relationship of preachers to Christ:

 Who then is Apollos, and who is Paul, but servants through whom you believed; and each as the Lord gave to him?

He also is able to explore the different roles of preachers and apostles in Christian ministry:

I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase.

Paul is able to differentiate the stages of a vital ministry, and also anticipates the variety of spiritual gifts that he will describe later in this same letter:

There are various kinds of service, and the same Lord. There are various kinds of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the profit of all (1 Corinthians 12:5-7).

But ultimately, the focus is to be on God who works through his servants and who gives the increase:

So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.

He also makes clear that there is no superiority or subordination of planter or waterer — they both receive a reward based on their work.

Finally, Paul returns to his agricultural metaphor, and adds a metaphor from the world of construction:

For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s farming, God’s building.

Paul makes it clear that he labors for the church because the church belongs to God, even if its members are still immature.  He is rooting for them to grow up into the church God intends them to become.

APPLY:  

One of the goals of the Christian life is growing up.  The Apostle Peter uses language very similar to Paul’s metaphor:

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—(1 Peter 2:2).

All Christians begin as spiritual babies who need to be nurtured carefully so they can grow up in faith.  Paul’s frustration is that the Corinthians are acting immaturely — fussing and fighting with one another instead of humbly admitting what they don’t know.  Such factionalism is a symptom of  spiritual immaturity.

Paul makes it clear that the source of our Christian growth and maturity is not our favorite pastor, or some extraordinary preacher — the only task of a pastor, preacher, evangelist or teacher is to serve God, whether they are planting or watering in God’s garden .  God gives the growth.

The focus, both for the preacher and the people, is to make the “main thing the main thing” — the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

RESPOND: 

Over the years as a pastor, I have noted a long succession of plans and programs that were designed to “help the church grow.”  “Church growth” was the battle cry in my denomination, and we used various metrics to measure growth.

Some of these programs were actually helpful.  But over time it has become clear to me that the role of the pastor/preacher is not to “grow” the church.  The role of the pastor/preacher is to humbly serve God, preach the Gospel, and get out of the way!

We may plant.  We may water.  But it is God who gives the increase.  One layman in my congregation said something very wise that I never forgot — “What good does it do for the church numbers to grow if the church members don’t grow with it?”

Lord, you call us to grow in grace as individuals and as a church.  Help us to focus on your Gospel, and not pick sides on issues and personalities in the church, so that we may become what you mean for us to become.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"1 Corinthians 3 verse 6" used this photo:
"rice stages, seed germination" by IRRI Photos is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for February 9, 2020

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
1 Corinthians 2:1-12, 13-16
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This is the Apostle Paul’s  personal apologia ­— a defense of his message and character.  It would seem, from a review of 1 & 2 Corinthians, that Paul has come under fire by a faction in the Corinthian church.

In this passage, he reminds the Corinthians that he came to Corinth with no pretentions to:

excellence of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.

We are instantly reminded of two things:

• The Greeks were famous for their fascination with eloquence and philosophy.
• Apollos, a Jewish convert to Christianity from the cultured and sophisticated city of Alexandria, was well-known for his brilliant eloquence.

Paul , however, focused simply on the straightforward message of the cross:

 For I determined not to know anything among you, except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

What was central to Paul’s message were not his own words, or his own character, but only Christ.  For Paul, the message of the cross is the pivotal point of the Gospel.  The life and teaching of Jesus lead to the cross, and the resurrection occurs as the result of the cross.  He will remind them later in his letter:

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,  that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Some translations more emphatically say that this message was of first importance (1 Corinthians 15:3, NRSV). 

Of himself, Paul is self-effacing.  He is essentially saying “I am of no importance. Christ and his message are of utmost importance.”  He declares that he preached to them:

in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.

Paul’s low self-image seems odd when contrasted to his boldness as described in the book of Acts, or even his personality as revealed in his letters. Some speculate that he alludes here to a possible physical affliction, his thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7) that may have flared during his tenure in Corinth.   Or perhaps he had been chastened by his recent supposed setbacks in Athens (Acts 17).

I’m not sure it is necessary to read so much into his self-deprecation.  He is making the point that the success of his preaching and ministry derives not from himself but from God:

 My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,  that your faith wouldn’t stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

As Paul will again insist in his second letter to the Corinthians:

For we don’t preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake….But we have this treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves (2 Corinthians 4:5,7).

Having said all of this, however, Paul makes it clear that the Gospel is not naive or simplistic — rather, it is the spear-point of the mysterious wisdom of God:

We speak wisdom, however, among those who are full grown; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing. But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory,  which none of the rulers of this world has known.

This wisdom, given only to those who are spiritually mature, transcends worldly wisdom and political power.  Paul is reiterating what he claimed in the previous passage (1 Corinthians 1:18-25), that even God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest human power, and God’s supposed foolishness is wiser than all human knowledge.

As evidence for the ignorance of the rulers of this world, Paul points out:

had they known it, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory.

The mystery of God’s wisdom, hidden from human understanding and yet woven into the very fabric of the universe, has begun to be revealed.  This is a spiritual reality that human senses and intellect are unable to perceive, but is only revealed by God.  Paul quotes Isaiah 64:4:

But as it is written,
“Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear,
which didn’t enter into the heart of man,
these God has prepared for those who love him.”

Paul begins to explore the unique work of the Spirit of God, which he has earlier said reinforced his preaching with the:

demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

And it is the Spirit who reveals God’s wisdom, and who searches both the deep things of God and the Spirit of human beings:

For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.  For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except God’s Spirit. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God.

Part of Paul’s understanding of the work of the Spirit is that the Spirit is a kind of liaison between God and human beings.  Note that the Spirit is God — Paul uses the phrase God’s Spirit and speaks of the Spirit which is from God.  He elaborates on this in Romans 8 when he describes how the Spirit dwells in us and testifies to our own spirits that we have become children of God through faith, and even penetrates the very mind of God and our own spirits through prayer:

 He who searches the hearts knows what is on the Spirit’s mind, because he makes intercession for the saints according to God (Romans 8:27).

I  prefer the translation from the NRSV:

And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit  intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

APPLY:  

Although Paul protests that he came to the Corinthians without  excellence of speech or of wisdom, I think he protests too much!

In this passage, he explores the mystery of grace, hidden from the foundation of the ages yet now revealed fully in Christ.  In this passage we see Paul explore the work of the Trinity, without ever using the term.

The power and wisdom of God the Father are revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and are declared through human preaching.  But it is not the preaching in and of itself that has power to save — it is the demonstration of the Spirit and of power that drives the message home.

God’s mysterious wisdom and power are disclosed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and then confirmed in the human spirit through the Spirit of God.  This is a  wisdom not of this world, disclosed to people who respond in faith and grow into the maturity of grace.

RESPOND: 

I remember when I first stood up in a pulpit to preach the Gospel, so many years ago.  How I identified with the Apostle Paul!

I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.

I confess that more than 40 years after my first sermon, which lacked all eloquence and wisdom, I still  experience weakness, fear and trembling when I preach — until I remind myself that I am preaching Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 

I resolved long ago to always focus on the message of Christ and about Christ in every sermon — whether it was a sermon based on an Old Testament text or a New Testament text.  This doesn’t mean I do damage to the integrity of the text and import meaning that isn’t there.  No, what it means is that Christ is the key to understanding the entire Biblical witness, and that through the witness of the Holy Spirit, that key is placed in our hearts to open the mystery of God’s power, wisdom, grace and love.

Lord, wherever I go enable me to disappear so that you may appear.  Help me to share the Good News of Jesus Christ so that there is a demonstration of your Spirit and power. Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"Corrie Ten Boom Quote" by the Corrie Ten Boom Museum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Epistle for January 26, 2020

Divided loyalties are like fractures in a smooth vase that will crack and eventually break into many shards.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

Paul gets down to nitty gritty details with the Corinthians.  He hears reports that this church, that means so much to him, is dividing into factions.  He appeals to the church:

through the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfected together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

There is evidence here of one of the distinguishing characteristics of the early church — the house church.  Paul speaks of hearing reports from Chloe’s household about the contentions in the Christian church.  Household church meetings for prayer and worship are regarded as the prototype for Christian ecclesiastical life in the early church. It may well be that Chloe’s household was such a house church.

But this is incidental to Paul’s real concern, that there are factions and divisions that are developing.  The factionalism falls along the lines of loyalty to various Christian leaders:

Now I mean this, that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” and, “I follow Christ.”

The last group, claiming to follow Christ seems odd.  Paul, of course, was the founder of the church at Corinth, and their first teacher.  Apollos was a gifted preacher who also had preached in many of the same churches as an evangelist that Paul had founded as a missionary.  Cephas, of course, is known more familiarly as Simon Peter, who became in time the de facto leader of the early church with the exception of James the brother of Jesus, who presided over the church in Jerusalem.

Were they not all followers of Christ?  Perhaps the group claiming to follow Christ was staking out a sense of  superiority, that they were in fact the true followers of Christ?  As we see throughout Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, there was a faction within the church that had a superiority complex.

Paul’s response to this factionalism is impassioned.  He asks a series of rhetorical questions which each suggest one clear answer — no:

 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul?

Paul’s insistence is that the church is to be centered around one person — Jesus Christ — not around Paul, Apollos or Cephas.

Paul elaborates on his own role as a missionary to the Corinthians for the sake of clarity:

 I thank God that I baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gaius,  so that no one should say that I had baptized you into my own name.

The issue for him is not whether or not he had baptized anyone — he remembers baptizing the household of Stephanas, but can’t remember baptizing anyone else.  Rather, the issue for Paul is that he doesn’t want followers!  His only mission has been to preach Christ.  Paul seeks to make followers of Christ, not followers of himself:

For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Good News—not in wisdom of words, so that the cross of Christ wouldn’t be made void.  For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are saved it is the power of God.

Although Paul is careful not to criticize Apollos or Cephas, there may be a subtext that only an insider would get.  He says that his role was not to preach the wisdom of words, but only the cross of Christ.  We know from the book of Acts that Apollos was an Egyptian Jew from Alexandria — which was renowned as the second greatest city of the Roman empire after Rome itself, and a center of commerce and of Hellenistic learning and culture.

Apollos was already famous for his eloquence (cf. Acts 18:24), and his bold preaching in the name of Christ.  However, it became necessary for him to be instructed more accurately about the details of the Gospel:

He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside, and explained to him the way of God more accurately (Acts 18:26).

Note that Paul isn’t deriding Apollos’ eloquence, but he is stating very clearly that the message of the cross doesn’t require eloquence.  The cross seems like folly to those who fail to grasp their own sinful nature and helplessness, but those who are saved recognize the cross as the powerful means of grace and salvation.

APPLY:  

We are wisely cautioned about over-idealizing the early church.  Although it was a  time of heroic risk and bold proclamation, the early church has much in common with the church today — it was comprised of people!

Many of the same issues that confronted the Christians in this young church in Corinth also confront us today.  And the issue that Paul addresses in this passage is just as relevant to us.  Paul decries the factions that have begun to appear.  These divided loyalties are like fractures in a smooth vase that will crack and eventually break into many shards.

His solution to the factionalism and divisiveness that he sees is the same that ours must be —  Christ is not divided, and we shouldn’t be divided either.

We must focus on the central message of the Gospel that unites us as Christians — the cross of Christ. 

RESPOND: 

This passage seems all too relevant to many of our churches today.  The Christian church, though comprised of perhaps 2.2  billion people — a third of the world’s population — is divided into a confusing number of denominations and non-denominational groups.

My own church is facing a possible schism in the next few years.  Issues of Biblical interpretation, doctrine, mission and morality are tearing at the very fabric of my denomination.

My response to these divisions is somewhat layered and nuanced:

First, I advocate the same response that Paul does to the possibility of division —  Is Christ divided?  The answer, of course, is no. We are told in Ephesians 2:13-16:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition,  having abolished in the flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace;  and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility thereby.

What Paul describes here is the radical work of Christ to break down the divisions between Gentiles and Jews, and to unite both as one through his redemptive ministry.  However,  I believe this unity transcends the divisions in the early church, and applies to the union of people of all races, nations, tribes, and even denominations.  If we can come together in Christ, we will find the true unity that the Scripture tells us is our destiny.

Second,  there is the reality that there are often serious differences of interpretation among Christians.  Sometimes those differences are, sadly, irreconcilable.  I cleave to an ancient formula for the sake of reconciliation — “Unity in the essentials, liberty in the non-essentials, love in all things.”

However, there are times that the differences are so great that Christians cannot simply ignore those differences with integrity.  Curiously, though Paul decries the divisions that threaten the Corinthian church, he also recognizes that such divisions are inevitable, and may in fact have a beneficial effect:

For first of all, when you come together in the assembly, I hear that divisions exist among you, and I partly believe it.  For there also must be factions among you, that those who are approved may be revealed among you (1 Corinthians 11:18-19).

The word translated as factions is the Greek word hairesis — which is the etymological word often translated as heresies.

So, although we may seek unity in Christ, there are threats to the faith that must be addressed.  Jude 3-4 puts it this way, when he writes of threats to the faith:

Beloved, while I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I was constrained to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.  For there are certain men who crept in secretly, even those who were long ago written about for this condemnation: ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into indecency, and denying our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Christian unity cannot come at the expense of doctrinal truth and moral integrity.

Lord, the forces that tear at the church today come not only from the outside but also from the inside of the church.  Keep us focused on you and your truth, and enable us to always speak the truth in love. Amen. 

PHOTO:
“small wheel thrown vase – 2008” by Zhao Shouren is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

Reading from Acts for June 2, 2019

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Acts 16:16-34
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

This week’s lectionary readings do not focus on the Day of Ascension.

Ascension Day always falls on the Thursday forty days following Easter Sunday.

If you prefer to use the Day of Ascension Scripture for this Sunday, click here for “The Reading from Acts for May 28, 2017”.

OBSERVE:

Even Apostles are human, with very personal idiosyncrasies.

Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke are in Philippi.  They have already begun to make converts in this Roman city — Lydia and her whole household have been baptized.

And evidently, Paul’s preaching and presence are a threat to the demonic powers.  The slave-girl, whose spirit of divination is exploited by her owners for financial gain, begins to harass Paul.

What is curious about this passage is that she isn’t necessarily saying anything that is untrue.  Her message is fairly accurate:

“These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

We read that Paul is annoyed when she keeps on trailing them and “outing” them.  But why is he so annoyed?  Is it because her motives are not good? Or is it because she is being exploited by her masters?  Is it because her message is only a half-truth — after all, Paul is offering the way of salvation?  In any event, he does something about it:

 Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.

So, it is one thing to confront someone’s religion; it is another to take away their gravy train!  Paul’s exorcism removes the slave owners’ lucrative and easy source of income!

They drag Paul and Silas into the marketplace and charge them with a kind of religious sedition.  Their complaint is that:

“…they are Jews  and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.”

This is interesting, because these missionaries are not persecuted for their Christian faith but for their Jewish customs!  We are reminded that although Judaism was somewhat protected by Roman laws, and Jews were exempted from military service, there was nevertheless a good deal of antipathy toward Jews by the Roman authorities.

As so often happened in those times, it didn’t take much to gather a mob and incite a riot:

The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods.

Needless to say, legal due process was not followed at all. They were arrested and imprisoned without trial:

After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

Paul and Silas respond to their adversity with faith and worship:

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.

What happens next is significant.  An earthquake rips open the bars of this maximum security prison.  We are not told if this is a supernatural response to the prayers of these missionaries, but it would seem logical to draw that conclusion.

The jailer, who is personally responsible for his prisoners, fears that they have done the obvious thing when this opportunity arises and had fled the scene.  Fearing the consequences from his Roman superiors, he draws his sword to commit suicide — until Paul intervenes:

 Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”

We can only imagine the dread of  Roman torture that the jailer may have felt for himself and his family.  He is so relieved that Paul and Silas have not escaped that he is deeply moved:

The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Surely the calm faith of these missionaries in the face of their arrest, their joyful worship even in the dreadful conditions of a prison, and their sensitivity to the jailer’s plight, have all been a powerful witness to the jailer.  Paul displays an acute awareness of the concerns that this jailer must have had.

But he also knows what he really needs:

“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”  They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.

What a change in demeanor the jailer experiences!  He washes and dresses the wounds that Paul and Silas had sustained when they were flogged, and he and his whole household are baptized.

We see again that conversion in the early church was often corporate.  Whole families followed the example of a family member and became Christians.   Just as Lydia’s whole household had been baptized, so the jailer’s household is baptized:

 He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

APPLY:  

Saints are people too.  Paul could be annoyed, and yet he could also be very sensitive to the needs of others.

The girl who was possessed by a spirit of divination was obviously possessed by a demon.  Paul’s motive for casting the demon out of her seems to be personal pique rather than compassion.

But before we judge his motives, we must consider the chain of events that the exorcism initiates.  The girl’s owners predictably blame Paul.  They incite a riot against these “Jews” who are threatening their own livelihood.

This is a reminder to us that our acts of compassion must be weighed carefully.  There will be consequences that we may not be able to control.

Missionaries who have gone into other cultures have learned that attacking the cultural mores of their host country may be very controversial.  The wise missionary must pick their time and place before challenging established belief systems and practices.

But when Paul and Silas are arrested, Paul puts into practice what he declares in Philippians 4:11-13.

I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

When the opportunity to escape presents itself, Paul doesn’t see this as a providential excuse to run away.  Paul is aware that the jailer will face serious consequences if his prisoners are missing.  So, he and Silas praise God despite the earthquake, and inspire a response of faith by their witness.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Paul was actually a Roman citizen.  The next day, when the Roman authorities discover they have flogged a Roman citizen and incarcerated him without due process of law, they are terribly worried.  They come cringing to Paul with apologies for having violated his civil rights.

Paul adapts to his circumstances, and uses his unique background for the advancement of the Gospel.  We must do the same with our circumstances and our own background.

RESPOND: 

Every encounter can be an opportunity for ministry if we allow God to use those moments.

When workmen come to the house for one reason or another, I figure God has given me a captive audience.  I will engage them in conversation about their craft, and let it slip that I’m a preacher.  And I try to be very personable, ask them about their work and family.

But quite often the conversation will turn to the “big issues” of life — good and evil, morality, marriage and divorce, the meaning of life.  And that gives me a golden opportunity in a non-threatening way to make a witness by talking about my faith, and what Christ means to me.

I don’t usually have the opportunity to “close the deal” and lead them to Christ.  To be honest, I’m not really great at that.  But I have had the opportunity to plant seeds.

Paul himself said of the work of  evangelism that it is a process.  He says of his own ministry and that of another missionary named Apollos:

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.  So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6-7).

Like Paul, I need to look for opportunities to evangelize — even if I may be annoyed, or find myself in adverse circumstances!

Lord, I pray for opportunities to share your story with others. If I only watch for them, and then engage people in conversation about their lives, those opportunities often arise. Give me the wisdom and the want-to so that I may bear witness to you wherever I go.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"Difficulty" by Mary Lee Hahn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.