Tag Archives: Acts

Daily Bible Study

November 15, 2019 Bible Study — God Decides What Is Clean

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Acts 9-10

The nature of Saul’s conversion is not uncommon.  Often times those who are the most loudly and violently opposed to the faith become some of its most vocal and forceful proponents when the Holy Spirit reaches them.  In Saul’s case, we see someone who used violence and torture against those whose arguments he could not refute.  Saul was a student of Gamaliel, the man who advised the Sanhedrin that if the Jesus’ teachings were not of God His followers would disperse now that Jesus had been crucified.  So, in persecuting the Believers, Saul was going against the advice of his own rabbi.

The key phrase from the account of Peter visiting Cornelius comes from Peter’s vision: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.”  There are many different ways in which this can be interpreted, but let’s look at how Peter interpreted it.  Before having this vision, Peter viewed Gentiles as unclean for failing to adopt Jewish cultural practices.   After the vision, Peter realized that anyone who fears God and does what is right is clean.  Peter felt this way when he began preaching.  Then the Holy Spirit validated his understanding by falling upon the Gentiles listening to him.  Also, let us note that these Gentiles were devout: they gave generously to the poor and prayed regularly.  Peter did not need to preach to them about this.

Daily Bible Study

November 14, 2019 Bible Study — Two Different Examples of Planting the Seed of the Gospel

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Acts 7-8

I think that it is important for us to look at Stephen as described here.  He did not back down from confrontation.  In fact, when he was standing trial before the Sanhedrin, he called them out for having Jesus crucified and compared that action to the ways in which the prophets of old had been killed.  Stephen accused to members of the Sanhedrin of hypocrisy and idolatry.  He made no attempt to defuse the situation.  Instead, he called men who considered themselves exemplars of righteousness persecutors of the righteous.  Luke’s account seems to suggest that Stephen’s testimony here served to radicalize Saul against the Church, leading Saul to persecute Believers.  Of course, Saul’s pursuit of that persecution led to his encounter with Christ, which resulted in his conversion.  We are not always called to calm passions, sometimes we are called to inflame them.

I love the account given here of Philip.  It shows that while Philip was appointed to the same office in the Church as Stephen the ministry to which he was called was different.  In particular, I want to look at his encounter with the Ethiopian.  This was essentially a chance encounter, although Luke makes clear that there are no such things as chance encounters.  Philip was walking along the road when he heard the Ethiopian reading Scripture out loud.  I suspect that was what clued Philip to the idea that the Ethiopian might be receptive to the Gospel.  It seems likely that the Ethiopian was reading out loud in an attempt to better understand what he was reading.  Whatever the case, Philip took the opportunity to show how the passage which the Ethiopian was reading was fulfilled in Jesus.  We, also, should take advantage of chance encounters to preach the Gospel.

Daily Bible Study

November 13, 2019 Bible Study — Pray For Courage, Not Protection

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Acts 4-6

When the Jewish Council ordered Peter and John to stop teaching in the name of Jesus, they responded that they would obey God rather than man.  Then when Peter and John returned to the other Believers after being threatened, the entire group prayed for courage in the face of these threats.  They did not pray for protection from persecution.  They prayed for courage to be faithful in the face of persecution.  In fact they prayed that their testimony would be even more noteworthy.  They sought to spread the word of God in the face of persecution and welcomed that persecution as a sign that they were faithfully following Jesus.  Further, we see that this prayer was not mere braggadocio.  A short time later, the Apostles were arrested while preaching in the Temple and thrown in jail overnight for a trial the following day.  They were miraculously freed from prison.  And what did they do with this freedom but go back to the Temple and start preaching again.

Daily Bible Study

November 12, 2019 Bible Study — The Disciples Get a Clue

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Acts 1-3

I am not sure I ever thought about the fact that even after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the apostles still thought He was going to overthrow the Roman Empire and re-establish the Kingdom of Israel.  Yet, a short time later, on the Day of Pentecost, Peter preached a sermon which appears to show that he understood that the Kingdom of Heaven was outside of geopolitics.

I had never before really thought about what happened on the Day of Pentecost from an outside perspective.  In the past I always thought about what happened from the perspective of those gathered, but today I wondered what drew the crowd?  It would be easy to think that the crowd gathered because they heard the disciples speaking in various languages, but that makes me wonder, how did they hear that.  However, the passage tells us that the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples generated a loud noise (the description suggests that it would have sounded like an explosion).  Which leads me to think that the crowd came to see what caused the noise and began asking the disciples what had happened.  The disciples all began answering in the native tongue of their interlocutors.  However, the members of the crowd would have had trouble understanding the answers they received, because, to be perfectly honest, the disciples would not have fully understood and the would not have known how much the person they were speaking to knew of the backstory.  Finally, Peter realized what was going on with the mixed messages being given and got everyone’s attention in order to give a coherent explanation (the Holy Spirit played a significant role in both Peter’s understanding of what was going on and in the explanation he gave).