Category: Bible

Today’s reading is from Acts 21-23.

Paul and his companions finally made it to Jerusalem, and they met with James and the other leaders. They were told that there was a rumor going around saying that Paul was telling Jews who lived in Gentile lands that they should turn from the law of Moses. They knew this wasn’t what Paul was doing, but they weren’t sure how to proceed; how to protect Paul. They encouraged him to take a Nazarite vow to show that he was still fully Jewish. So he did. This involved going through purification rites, including shaving his head.

After the seven days of purification, Paul went to the temple, and it was there that he was seized. It was actually Jews from Ephesus who had followed Paul back to Jerusalem and who stirred up the crowd against him. Paul was beaten by the Jews, and they were about to kill him, but the Roman soldiers intervened. Paul was arrested simply to calm the mob down. The Roman commander then began trying to figure out what was going on.

Paul was given the opportunity to speak to the crowd. He told them who he was. He was a Jew born in Tarsus who studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the Jewish law. He was zealous in his persecution of the followers of Jesus until that day when he was on the road to Damascus and he met the risen Lord.

The crowd listened to his story until he got to the part where God sent him to the Gentiles, in part because he wasn’t safe among his own people. At the mention of Gentiles they began shouting that he must die. The Roman commander ordered that Paul be taken into custody and beaten.

At this Paul decided he should let the commander know that he too was Roman, and it was illegal to beat a Roman citizen without him first going through a trial.

The next day the Roman commander released Paul into the custody of the Sanhedrin (Jewish ruling body), and he stood before Ananias the high priest.

Paul was a smart fella, and he knew that in this room were both Pharisees and Sadducees, and for many years they had disagreed on whether or not there is a resurrection for God’s people. So he decided to play into this. He told the crowd that he was a Pharisee, and he had hope in the resurrection of the dead. Now all of a sudden the Sadducees were yelling, but the Pharisees said, “We find nothing wrong with this man. What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him” (Acts 23:9). How funny is that!

The Roman commander was worried that Paul would be torn into pieces by the crowd, so he took Paul into custody, just to keep him safe.

The next day a group of 40 Jews made an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. This is serious. They plotted to kill him when Paul came before the Sanhedrin again. Fortunately for Paul, he was warned of the plot by his nephew. The nephew told the commander, who decided at that point that he couldn’t let this happen to a Roman citizen under his watch. So he sent Paul to Caesarea to let Governor Felix deal with him.

Today’s reading is from Acts 20-21.

After Paul’s three years in Ephesus, he spent three months back in Corinth. This is where he wrote Romans. He then began to make his way towards Jerusalem. On the way he called for the elders from the church in Ephesus to meet him. He knows that this will be the last time that he sees them. He lets them know that. They don’t like hearing words like this.

They also don’t like hearing him talk about Jerusalem being the place where he will die. He tells them this, but he also tells them that he is ok with this. He says, “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24).

After he spoke to them for awhile, they knelt together and prayed. Luke says that they all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. And then he says, “What grieved them the most was his statement that they would never see his face again” (Acts 20:38).

You see here the impact that Paul had made on this group of people. They loved him. They didn’t want to see him suffer. They wanted to do whatever they could do to keep him safe. But they also knew that Paul had made his mind up. He was going to Jerusalem, and he was willing to die there.

At each of Paul’s next stops his friends urged him to turn back and not to go to Jerusalem. But he would not be dissuaded.

Just as we began Romans looking at worship, so we end there. Humanity’s first problem was, “People knew God perfectly well, but they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him” (Romans 1:21, The Message). We’ve looked at the impact that this had not simply on humans but on all of creation. Jesus came to free us from the slavery that came as a result of sin. Not only this, he also restored our relationship to God and our vocation of working with God to reconcile to himself all things.

Here is Romans 12:1-2 from The Message…

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Worship can be things we say or sing, or rituals that we participate in. But worship is far bigger than this. Worship is more about our ordinary life than any religious rituals. It’s less about what we do on Sunday and more about what we do Monday through Saturday.

Worship occurs when we say thank you to God for the small things in life. It’s when we humbly acknowledge that we need his help. It’s when we enter into the process of God making us who he created us to be. It’s when we respond to his prompts. It’s when we sit still and are mindful of his presence. It’s when we surrender to his will.

Today’s reading covers several chapters of , but I want to focus on just a few verses from chapter 8.

I hinted at this a couple of days ago, but there was an original calling that humanity had. It was to be God’s representatives over his good creation. But when we failed to worship God and instead worshiped idols, something happened, to us and to the creation that we failed to steward. Both fell into a sort of disrepair. God then allowed, for quite some time, for us to remain in a state of slavery. That time ended with Jesus, both for us and for creation. Though for creation, it appears that there is still some waiting to be endured.

So what is creation waiting on?

Here’s how NT Wright translates Romans 8:19-21…

Yes, creation itself is on tiptoe with expectation, eagerly awaiting the moment when God’s children will be revealed. Creation, you see, was subjected to pointless futility, not of its own volition, but because of the one who placed it in this subjection, in the hope that creation itself would be freed from its slavery to decay, to enjoy the freedom that comes when God’s children are glorified.

The life-giving relationship that we had with God had been broken due to our rebellion. Jesus’ death came to restore everything that was lost and broken. It of course began with our relationship with God. But it wasn’t just our relationship that was restored. Our vocation was also restored.

Many of us were led to believe that the finish line was receiving the gift of salvation that came through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. But it’s not the finish line. Jesus spoke of it as new birth. No one thinks of the birth of a child as the finish line. It’s the starting point.

Once our relationship with God was restored, now the true work would begin. In Christ God was inviting us to once again take on the role of ambassador of his kingdom. We would once again represent the King. And through every act of justice, kindness and generosity, the creation that had been broken would begin to be restored.

That’s why creation is on tiptoe with expectation. It knows what is coming. It is waiting on us!

Another one of my favorite passages is found in Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. I’m again going to share from The Message.

By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us – set us right with him, make us fit for him – we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand – out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise. There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary – we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!
Romans 5:1-5

Here’s why I’m encouraged by this passage.

As we looked at yesterday, it is through Christ that we have been set right with God. This was the plan all along – for us to work alongside God in his act of reconciling to himself all things.

I love the imagery of throwing open our doors to God. It’s saying, “Here I am.” But when we do that, we see that he’s already made the first move towards us. And where we find ourselves in that moment is a wide open space marked by God’s grace and glory. We’re safe in this space. We’re free in this space. We’re loved in this space.

Here’s where it gets really good though.

It’s one thing to praise God when things are going well and when we sense his presence. But what happens when there is struggle? Loss? Pain? Confusion? Suffering? How do we respond then? We can acknowledge even then that we’re still in that wide open space with God. God has not left us. God is still at work.

It’s in those moments, more so than when things are peachy, that we develop perseverance. Grit. Fortitude. Patience. And it’s not simply perseverance for perseverance’s sake. No, this perseverance develops in us character, or, as it’s stated above, “the tempered steel of virtue.” Suffering can cause us to lose hope, but when we go through this process, it can also lead to a sustaining hope.

And it’s in that moment, after we’ve come out of the darkness stronger, that we realize how much God truly loves us and takes delight in us.

Today I want to look at just a few verses from the first chapter of Romans. These verses have shaped my spiritual life in profound ways.

In verses 16-17 Paul defines the gospel as, “the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.” Here’s how it reads in The Message: “this extraordinary Message of God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him.”

The word gospel means “good news.” What is associated with good news is normally bad news. I grew up thinking that the bad news was that a good God had created and blessed me, and in response to that amazing gift I had sinned and rebelled against him. The punishment for that sin and rebellion was that I was destined for eternity in hell. But God sent Jesus to take on this punishment. If I accepted this free gift, then I could be forgiven and cleansed, my relationship with God would be restored, and I would get to spend eternity in heaven.

It’s not that I no longer believe this story. It’s just that there are now some rather large tweaks to it.

Paul goes on to explain the problem in verses 21-23…

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Again, from The Message…

What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.

Here’s where I would differ with the way The Message puts it. I don’t think those were simply cheap figurines. They were actually powerful idols.

The problem wasn’t simply that we sinned. It was that we knew God was God but we didn’t treat him like God (refusing to worship him). We rejected God and turned instead to other things. It’s actually impossible to reject God and then to not put some thing or someone in that same position. We were all created to worship. I wrote about this awhile back.

Paul continues in verses 24-25…

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen.

And from The Message:

So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them – the God we bless, the God who blesses us.

We reject God believing that we will be happier when we are in control. We believe that it will lead to freedom, but it doesn’t. That’s the lie. It instead leads to slavery. And we soon learn that we are incapable of escaping on our own. We need help.

This is Edmund’s story in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Edmund has believed a lie that the Witch can offer him something he doesn’t have, and it’s not just turkish delight, as great as I’m sure that is. It’s power. He wants more power than his brother Peter has. But the lie leads to action, and the action leads to slavery.

This is the bad news. Because of our rejection of God and the inevitable giving ourselves to idols, we were enslaved by those idols. Sin was the natural result of this enslavement. And there was nothing that we could do to escape.

Edmund’s story, just as our own, thankfully ends with good news. The gospel is the “extraordinary Message of God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him.” The word “rescue” is key for me. I think it’s a more helpful word than salvation, but that’s what salvation means.

If you’ve read the book, you know that Aslan willingly dies so that Edmund doesn’t have to. That’s what everyone sees, and that is the story I grew up with. But it doesn’t stop there, because in his death is also something bigger. Something more explosive. Something they don’t yet see. In his death he is overthrowing the idols so that things can return to the way they were meant to be. He’s overthrowing “always winter but never Christmas”, which is a terrible thing. He’s setting free the slaves that have been turned to stone by the witch. It’s redemption. It’s rescue.

This is the larger good news story. It’s bigger than simply us as individuals. God has a plan to reconcile all things to himself (Colossians 1:20). Jesus’ death brought forgiveness, cleansing and reconciliation with God. But it also broke the shackles and allowed us to reclaim the role God gave us of partnering with him in this task of reconciling all things. This is truly good news!

The readings for the next five days are on what most people believe is Paul’s greatest work – the book of Romans. I’ve once again known pastors who have spent a year preaching through this book of the Bible. And countless pages of commentary have been written on it.

This letter is different from the previous ones we’ve looked at in that it’s written to a group of people whom Paul had never met. How had this church been started then? No one really knows for sure. There were Jews from Rome at that Pentecost when the Church was birthed. No doubt many of them returned to Rome at some point. We also know that Priscilla and Aquila were from Rome. They ended up in Corinth, where Paul would meet them, after Emperor Claudius had expelled all Jews from Rome (AD 49). Priscilla and Aquila would follow Paul to Ephesus to help him start the church there. When Claudius died in AD 54, so too did the edict banning Jews in Rome. Thus they were able to return. Paul mentions them at the end of this letter, calling them his co-workers and noting they risked their lives for him (Romans 16:3-4).

Rome was of course the largest and most influential city in the Roman Empire. It was a city that Paul longed to go to. The church there knew who he was, and he had no doubt heard stories of who they were. Since at this point he couldn’t visit them, he decided to write them a letter.

Because this was such an influential church in an influential city, he wanted to use this letter as an opportunity to flesh out his theology. This theology had been taking root in his life for the last 25 years. People from all over the known world visited Rome, whether for business or pleasure. Many of those visitors encountered residents who had been shaped by the message of Jesus, and thus many of those visitors would end up taking that same message back to where they were from.

In the last few chapters of 2 Corinthians Paul once again feels the need to justify his work. There have apparently been some “super-apostles” (2 Corinthians 11:5) who have come to Corinth to denounce Paul’s work. These men are most likely from Jerusalem, but they’re not the same Jewish leaders who were trying to stop Jesus. These men are leaders in the church. They at some point came to the conclusion that Jesus was in fact the Messiah, and they dedicated their lives to following him.

However, they, like Jesus’ disciples, had an agenda. That agenda was that Gentiles must follow the Jewish customs and laws if they were going to follow the Jewish Messiah. They believed that this was their calling, and as much as they appreciated Paul for what he had done in bringing the gospel to the Gentiles, they felt that he was causing harm by not taking this next step with them. As a result, they felt it necessary to talk trash about Paul. They said, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing” (2 Corinthians 10:7).

As we’ve seen before, Paul saw this “next step” as adding to the gospel, which is in essence making it a different gospel. He’s said this more times than he can count, but because these impressive “super apostles” have denounced him, he feels it necessary to prove himself.

He reminds them of his background. He also reminds them of all that he has gone through in order to have even been able to meet them (prison, shipwrecked, stoned, beaten, sleepless nights, hunger). None of these “super-apostles” had faced anything like this. More than anything, though, he wants them to know that it is his weaknesses that he can most lean into. Paul is about to turn everything on its head.

Paul shared about a very powerful vision that had. something that most people would never get to experience. But then he said this…

In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in my weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 2:7-10

Paul was more interested in a posture that welcomed Christ’s power than he was in his own talents. That’s why he could boast in his weaknesses. He wanted this congregation to know that it is in humility that we find strength. It’s when we’re weak that we are needy. And it’s in those moments that we truly experience God doing what only God can do.

Today and tomorrow we’ll be looking at Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church. As I mentioned a few days ago, there are several letters between Paul and this church. There’s a first letter from Paul, which has been lost. Then the church wrote him a letter with questions. Then he wrote a letter in response, which we know as 1 Corinthians.

Some apparently pushed back against Paul in their next letter, which is when Paul wrote his “painful” letter (2 Corinthians 2:4), which has also been lost. Then there was silence. Paul was grieved over the situation in Corinth. He loved these people. He had spent 18 months with them.

When Paul arrives in Macedonia, he finds Titus, who had gone to Corinth to deliver the painful letter. Paul breathes a sign of relief when Titus tells him that the church received his letter with humility and repentance. Paul is overjoyed and, since he’s unable to see them in person, writes one final letter. We know this one as 2 Corinthians.

In 1 Corinthians Paul had reprimanded the church for their tolerance of sin. There was a man in the congregation who had been sleeping with his father’s wife. It was completely out in the open. Not only was no one telling this guy that he was wrong, but they were actually proud of the “freedom” that was so evident in their congregation. Paul told them in the letter that they must do better. It’s very possible that their push back was over this situation.

They have apparently now listened to Paul, but he now feels that they’ve gone a little overboard with their punishment. He addresses this in chapter 2. He says that the punishment is sufficient. Who knows what the punishment was, but it sounds like he’s been shunned. Paul says that they now need to take a different approach. Now, they “ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed with excessive sorrow” (2 Corinthians 2:7). He tells them that its now time to reaffirm their love for him.

I find it interesting that the repentance/rethinking took place in the community before it took place in the individual. The community had been celebrating this guy’s “freedom”, even though it wasn’t truly freedom that he was experiencing. Paul wasn’t happy with how this guy was behaving, but he was more troubled by the community’s response. He spoke truth to them. Their tolerance and celebration were not leading to wholeness for this person. And it would have an impact on the community as a whole. That’s why he had used Jesus’ analogy of yeast and dough (1 Corinthians 5:6).

But now the community had listened to Paul. They had been firm with their friend. And their friend had responded. The community responded properly, and now so had he. They had gone a little too far, though, and now Paul was there to help them take the next step. He reminded them that this man needed to experience comfort and forgiveness. He knew that what he had done was wrong. If he continued to be shunned, excessive sorrow would be the result, and that’s a difficult thing to come back from.

Paul will receive a letter back from the Corinthian church, and then he’ll write a second letter, which we’ll get to tomorrow. For now, though, let’s go back to the book of Acts. As I wrote a few days ago, Paul’s third missionary journey was to Asia, and it was during this journey that he was able to spend a large block of time (3 years) in one city (Ephesus). How nice to not be run out of town two weeks after arriving!

By this point Paul was an old man. I’m about to turn 50 and don’t consider that old, but back then it was. He had to think about what would happen after he was no longer around. So he spent these three years in Ephesus training men and women who would start and lead new churches. The seven churches that we see in Revelation 2-3 were most likely started during this time.

Ephesus was a very large city. It was a port city, and like Corinth, was very diverse. Ephesus is the home of one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, the temple of Artemis. I plan to write a bit about Artemis when we get to Paul’s letter to Timothy.

It’s also during time time that a teenager named Nero will become emperor of Rome. Nero will play a big role in Paul’s story.

Paul’s time in Ephesus came to an end because he threatened the economic system in Ephesus. There was a silversmith named Demetrius who made silver shrines for the temple of Artemis. He rallied together other business owners in Ephesus to complain about Paul. They felt that Paul was leading people astray. “He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all (Acts 19:26). He acknowledged that this was impacting his business, but he also pointed out that it was discrediting the great goddess Artemis (he probably wasn’t that concerned about that – it was all about the money).

Soon the whole city was in an uproar. Paul and his friends didn’t know what was going to happen to them. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and the uproar ended. Paul figured he should take advantage of the calm and go ahead and leave Ephesus, so he did.