Month: October 2022

Week 44  Acts 9

This year I was noticing the spectacular events in the church.
On the Day of Pentecost people were beside themselves with wonder. They were amazed and perplexed.
When the apostles performed miracles everyone was filled with awe.
The lame man walked and people were absolutely astounded…and in awe of the wonderful thing that had happened.
Ananias & Sapphira died on-the-spot and people were filled with great fear.
Stephen performed amazing miracles and signs.
In Samaria when Philip performed miracles there was great joy.
Aeneas was healed and the whole population…turned to the Lord.
Tabitha was raised from the dead.
I could easily form the impression that the NT church was a parade of spectacles. But there was quite a bit of low-key normalcy at the same time. I noticed when I read Tabitha’s story there’s only two things said about her life: she was always doing kind things for others and helping the poor (the example given was that she made clothing for widows in Lydda).
It’s one of the great short stories in Acts. All that Tabitha did was to help the poor and do kind things for people. It wasn’t very much…no inexplicable jaw-dropping actions by Tabitha. But there was standing-room only when she died.

Note: quotes from Acts 2:7 12 2:43 3:10-11 5:5 11 6:8 8:6 9:35 40 36 (NLT). End of month report: I’ve read 1587-pages out of 1730. So I’m staying ahead.

Week 43  Acts 9

Paul’s conversion story is told three times. In Acts 9 (by Luke) and then in  chapter 22 & 26 (by Paul).
A couple of years ago I noticed that the words that the Lord said to Paul were reported differently in each telling…mostly in length:
Account #1: the Lord said 30 words
Account #2: 38 words
Account #3: 127 words.
This year I noticed that the length of each account was also different:
Account #1: 16 verses (~360 words)
Account #2: 11 verses (~230 words)
Account #3: 7 verses (~190 words).
So obviously there’s differences:
The first account is told by Luke and is more detailed. Paul is telling his own story in #2 & #3.
A detail in one account might get skipped in another (for example Ananias isn’t even mentioned in Account #3).
Or a detail might be in one account only (for example Ananias tells Paul to get baptized only in #2).
But the differences are in the details. The stories are the same. It’s not like one account says Paul didn’t go blind…or that he put Ananias in prison…or that he heard the Lord tell him he was doing a great job.
It’s like if a kid keeps asking me to tell the story of the wolf and the pigs. I might switch-out some of the details each time I retell it but the wolf is always big and bad and the pigs – three of them – are always little.

Note: The Damascus road story is in Acts 9:3-18 22:6-16 & 26:12-18.

Week 43  Acts 4-5

Along with quite a few admirable developments in the NT church quite a bit of hostility from opponents also got mixed right in – verbal-threats physical-violence imprisonment and like that.
One pretty interesting adversarial development was when the religious leaders put a gag order on the apostles.
They told them: never to speak or teach again about Jesus. (Peter & John replied: do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him?)
Before long the council re-arrested them: didn’t we tell you never again to teach in this man’s name? (The apostles replied: we must obey God rather than human authority.)
Later the leaders: ordered them again never to speak in the name of Jesus . (But: the apostles left the high council…and continued to teach and preach.)
So the disciples flat-out contravened that particular by-law. It’s not like they weren’t law-abiding citizens (but they weren’t law-abiding to the point of being 100% compliant no-matter-what the state decreed).
The sticking point for the church was their idea of a Command Structure (CS).
God was at the top of the CS. What he decided was absolute & final. The state was part of the CS and so it could make rules too. But any rules that violated the Lord’s rules – just based on how the logic of the CS worked – were illegitimate.
One of the early church’s jobs was distinguishing legitimate rules (which they obeyed) from non-legitimate ones (which they legitimately disregarded).

Note: quotes from Acts 4:18-19 5:27 29 5:40-42 (NLT)

Week 43  Acts 6

I get the sense that in the early days the NT church categorized people in one of two ways:
There were people who believed in the Lord and were in the church.
There were people who didn’t believe in the Lord and were outside of the church.
A pretty basic divide. But things didn’t stay simple:
As the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. Those who spoke Greek complained against those who spoke Hebrew, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.
So an in-church sub-division had already began:
There were people in the church who believed (and spoke Hebrew).
And people in the church who believed (and spoke Greek).
(Soon enough there’ll be:
Jewish people in the church who believed and spoke Hebrew.
Jewish people in the church who believed and spoke Greek.
And non-Jewish people in the church who believed and spoke Greek.
And there’d be more subdivisions: nationality ethnicity language country-of-origin gender occupation age wealth/income status class vocation marital-status health and like that.)
So anyway…what happened with the inequitable food distribution?
The leaders listened to the complaint…
They knew they needed to re-equalize the inequity…
So they gave highly qualified people the job of restoring equilibrium.
Back in chapter two it sounded like the church was uncommonly wonderful. By chapter six there were signs the wonderfulness was degrading so the church took action to restore what it had had.

Note: quote from Acts 6:1 (NLT)

Week 43  Acts 5

The Ananias & Sapphira story is alarming & provocative.
I usually think of it as a stand-alone episode but it’s really more a story of contrasts because it goes together with the story of Barnabas from chapter four.
There are similarities and differences between Barnabas and A&S.
Barnabas:
owned a tract of land…
sold it for cash…
gave it to the church.
A&S:
had a piece of property…
sold it for cash…
gave it to the church.
In the actual-visible-financial world of real estate transactions and charitable-giving Barnabas and A&S are exactly the same.
But in the world of what’s happening behind the actual-visible-financial world of real estate transactions and charitable-giving Barnabas and A&S are pretty dissimilar.
Peter revealed that A&S had:
colluded on a plan to deceive people…
lied to the apostles about how much money they kept…
lied to the Lord…
put the Spirit to the test.
(Peter doesn’t actually say it but it’s a safe guess that Barnabas didn’t deceive people or lie about his gift or put the Spirit to the test.)
I remember a couple of similar instant-reaction stories from the OT. In the totality of events I figure they’re rare. But their bolt-from-the-blue suddenness is electrocutive. They’re frightening & devastating & unexpected.
My guess is that people regularly lie deceive & put the Spirit to the test without any outcomes.
So A&S are tragic reminders.

Note: the story is in Acts 5:1-11

Week 43  Acts 2

Number-wise the church was growing fast in the early days and I wondered how leaders managed the sudden growth. It’s like having 100 subscribers on your channel and then next day you’ve got 10000.
But a more important question for me is: what-all’s going on in the church?
Luke started answering that question in chapter 2. 3000 new people came into the faith and they:
Got together with the other believers
Devoted themselves to learning what the church taught
Shared in communion & in regular community meals
Prayed together
Spent a lot of time together
Shared what they had
Sold what they owned and gave to needy people
Worshipped together & praised God
Luke described more than a dozen things but I highlighted these since they seemed pretty important.
While I’m reading the bible I have a kind of general concept floating around that I think of as The Applicability Question (AQ). (Probably lots of people figure the bible is totally inapplicable to real-life circumstances in the modern world. But I look for applicability.)
The AQ subdivides bible content into three main categories:
A) bible things that I think are inapplicable
B) borderline bible things I’m not sure about
C) bible things that are applicable in the contemporary world.
I think that several of the features that Luke points out about the church in the ancient world are heavyweight principles that cross time & geography & cultures so that now ought to be a modern version of then.

Note: paraphrased verses from Acts 2:42-47

Week 43  Acts 2

I was noticing the numerical data Luke gave on how quickly the church grew.
In chapter 1 he said there were 120 loyal followers of the Lord (there were likely more than that in total but that was the core group in Jerusalem).
Luke estimated that after the sudden arrival of the Holy Spirit 3000 people came into the church.
And before too long 5000 more came to belief.
After that I found some more church-growth data but it was qualitative:
More and more people believed and were brought to the Lord
The (number of) believers rapidly multiplied
The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem.
I sketched out a rough graph. I knew that my axes were a bit shaky – I estimated some values on both my x (time) and y (numbers) lines (in fact I flat-out cheated with some numbers – the three times where Luke didn’t give exact numerical data I added an arbitrary 1000 people). But I figure the basic trendline was pretty obvious & indisputable. It was all up…up…up for awhile – maybe weeks or months.
Of course then Saul of Tarsus arrived with his religiously-sanctioned oppression and so the believers bugged-out en masse (except the apostles). So my graph stepped off a cliff.
Anyway the exercise got me thinking about a related question: how did the leaders manage the sudden growth? And another question in the back of my mind was: what-all was going on in the church as it expanded?

Note: see Acts 1:15 2:41 4:4 5:14 6:1 6:7 8:1 (NLT)

Week 43  Acts 2

I just finished reading the gospels in consecutive order. That’s been 179-pages of the life of Jesus. Now here in this long sermon Peter basically compresses those 89 chapters into ~25-verses.
I wondered if Peter’s synopsis could be boiled down even more and when I got rid of a few things I came up with this more-condensed version:
Listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.
This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.
But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.
Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.
Abbreviated versions are usually good for two reasons. First is that they’re abbreviated. And secondly – if they’re any good in their selection criteria – they pick the most important ideas to highlight.
Peter gives public addresses again in chapters three four & five and these ideas keep showing up: A) Christ was from God. B) you assassinated him. C) God raised him from the dead. Key ideas. Repeater ideas. Ideas worth remembering.

Note: quote from Acts 2:22-24 36 (NIV)

Week 42  Acts 1

When the Lord left the earth there were eleven disciples who watched him go and Luke lists them in chapter one: Peter John James Andrew Philip Thomas Bartholomew Matthew James (Alphaeus’ son) Simon (the Zealot) Judas (James’ son).
I knew that some of the gospels listed the disciples and so I checked them for comparison. There’s a couple of differences among the four lists.
Two of the writers call Peter Peter and two call him Simon
Two just call John John but two add family connections (James’ brother & Zebedee’s son)
Two add that James was Zebedee’s son
Two say that Andrew was Peter’s brother
All four just name Philip Thomas Bartholomew & Matthew. No differences & no add-ons
All four say that the other James was Alphaeus’ son and that the other Simon was the Zealot
Two identify the other Judas as the son of James and two call him Thaddeus.
So some writers call a person by one name and not another. Some point out family connections or make the point that there were two Simons’ & two Judas’.
There’s only a couple of minor differences or variations in the lists. No disagreement.
Well…there is one big difference. Acts’ list only has eleven names. Luke seems to be making the point: ‘we started with twelve but one defected’. The twelfth man – Judas Iscariot – had to be replaced. And most of chapter one tells that story.

Note: the lists are in Acts 1:13 Matthew 10:2-4 Mark 3:16-19 & Luke 6:14-16

Week 42  John 8

I’d been thinking about The Word being Light so right away I noticed when Jesus said I am the light of the world.
Whatever-all they took that to mean the religious leaders didn’t like it and told him: you are making those claims about yourself! (which was true). And they went on to say: such testimony is not valid (which wasn’t necessarily true). Since when was it not permissible to say something about yourself? Let’s say for instance that a guy tells me “I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro”. Maybe he did or maybe he didn’t. But I’m not going to tell him it can’t possibly be true because he told me about it himself.
I think the problem for the Lord’s opponents was that they really had no solid basis for knowing whether the Lord was or wasn’t the Light of the World. Even if it was an extravagant claim that couldn’t be the reason to deny it.
That’s why the Lord’s reply made pretty good sense: even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going…You have no idea where I came from or where I am going. You judge by human standards.
No disrespect to human standards – I think they’re a big help and can get me a far piece. But the question is can they take me as far as I need to go?

Note: quotes from John 8:12-15 (NLT NIV)