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Week 44  Acts 1-8

One thing that’s happening in the church is that it’s expanding.
Luke is tracking growth between chapter one and chapter eight.
The first actual number he gives is when Peter addressed a roomful of people and 120 believers were present. Were there more than that? Maybe. But there weren’t less. 120 people is my starting point.
At a public gathering Peter spoke to big crowd and 3,000 people came to belief. So 120 + 3000 = 3120.
In spite of religious opposition more-and-more people kept joining the church so that the number of believers totaled about five thousand men, not counting women and children.
The number has got to be bigger but I decide to stand-pat at 5,000. That’s maybe just as well because after chapter 4 Luke starts ball-parking his numbers. He says things like:
More and more people believed and were brought to the Lord
The believers rapidly multiplied
The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem.
Expressions like more and more or greatly increased tell me almost exactly nothing. I decide (arbitrarily & out on a limb) to add 1,000 for these three occasions: 5,000 +1,000 + 1,000 + 1,000 = 8,000.
I figure there were more than 8,000 believers by chapter 6. But that’s beside the point because in chapter the church came into the angry crosshairs of the angry religious establishment and all the believers except the apostles fled.
And just like that the church census in Jerusalem dropped by way over 99%.

Note: quotes & facts from Acts 1:15 2:41 4:4 5:14 6:1 6:7 8:1 (NLT)

Week 44  Acts 4

I found a few more things that were going on in the church at the end of chapter four:
1. believers were one-in-heart
2. believers were one-in-mind
3. no one claimed that their possessions were private
4. people shared
5. the apostles possessed great power
6. they preached about the resurrection of Jesus
7. God was powerfully at work
8. there were no needy people in the church
9. people with property sold it to help people in need.
I decided to try tidying up Luke’s list by reorganizing it into four ideas:
1. believers were united in heart & mind
2. no one claimed personal ownership (they shared everything. Property was sold and the proceeds were redistributed by the apostles. There were no needy people in the church!)
3. the apostles’ message was the resurrection of Jesus
4. the apostles’ tremendous zip was God’s power at work.
I think my tidying-up project – compartmentalizing Luke’s elements by topic – was likely a mostly bogus way of kidding myself that I was Analyzing the Passage. My big concern about Luke’s mixed-up list probably – in real life circumstances – came together in a pretty seamless way.
Anyway…out of the four items the one about social concern stands out the most. It’s definitely talked about the most (maybe because the ominous Ananias-and-Sapphira story is coming up).
But there it is: if my church isn’t helping people who are in need then my church is acting differently than the church in Acts.

Note: the list is in Acts 4:32-35

 

Week 44  Acts 2

What was the church like in the book of Acts? That was my main question. The answer started with a five-verse summary in chapter two:
• people educated themselves about the apostles’ message
• believers fellowshipped (a not-so-common word. More-than friendship. More-like comradeship. Companionship. It’s like the church is an alliance of like-minded people who aren’t all best-friends but are on the same page & pilgriming along in the same direction)
• They broke bread together (another not-so-common expression that might mean a) having a meal together or b) celebrating the communion sacrament)
• They prayed together.
Luke adds a couple of other details like getting together publicly (at the Temple) and in small-groups (in people’s homes). There’s also some serious share-and-share-alike features – people selling personal possessions to help people in need.
The big idea I get from Luke’s introduction is Togetherness.  Even though he mentions a couple of personal things – the believers had glad & sincere hearts and they praised the Lord – Luke’s focus is on Togetherness practices.
I noticed a couple of differences between the church-then and the church-now.
A) people met in the temple (a practice that got permanently ditched)
B) there were lots of spectacular miracles (the high-volume & high-quality of miracles tailed-off)
C) the church held things in common (I get the impression that community-minded concerns were a higher-priority then )
D) the church had good public approval ratings (which didn’t last long).
So Acts 2 was a nice starting point.

Note: quite a bit of paraphrasing from Acts 2:42-47

Week 42  John 9

The disciples saw a man who was born blind and they asked Jesus whose sin made this man blind: a) his own sin or b) his parents’ sin?
It was a theoretical question – the man being born blind and all. But what wasn’t debatable was that someone must have done wrong. Otherwise the guy wouldn’t be blind. People suffered because degradation got paid-forward.
I spent the first eight months of this year reading the OT and I can understand why the disciples asked the question. There’s quite a bit of OT content that pretty definitely spells out the idea that the way I live my life has consequences. But it looks like by Jesus’ time the basic principle had been developed & expanded into a hard-and-fast rule that suffering people suffer because they’re bad people.
It seems like a handy diagnostic tool:
Is a guy crippled?
Does he have MS?
Leprosy?
Well…he’s gotta be a bad guy.
So the Lord had to bring the disciples up to speed. This man was a) not blind because he sinned and b) not blind because his folks sinned but c) was blind so that the power of God could be seen in him.
A correct OT idea had been reworked & reformulated over time to the point of nonsensicality.
Like with the Sermon on the Mount the Lord had to scrape off a layer of barnacles to get to the real OT.

Note: quote from John 9:3 (NLT)

Week 42  John 4

I’ve been wondering about the title Messiah and why some bible versions use it and others don’t. I decided to run a comparison test.
I chose the verse where the Samaritan woman says to Jesus I know the Messiah will come.
I checked an online site where I could compare this verse in 63 bible versions. Almost all of the versions used the word Messiah (or Messias of Mashiach). The other four used another name (Anointed One or the Christ). So about 94% of the versions liked Messiah in John 4:25.
So then I looked up a second verse. It was the time when people came to John the Baptist and asked who he was. He said: I am not the Messiah. Out of the 63 versions 23 used Messiah (37%). The other 40 used the Christ (or something else).
After I was finished counting it occurred to me that the exercise was a bit of a waste of time. But there’s a couple of useful takeaways:
1. One obvious thing: there’s lots of bible versions and each one uses different words & ideas in re-writing the bible
2. One not-so-obvious thing: all the different people who write different bible versions bible versions have different ideas and make their own decisions about what to say. And it isn’t always clear to a bible-reader what’s behind those ideas and decisions.
3. One reminder: give it some thought before landing with both feet on one version.

Note: quotes from John 4:25 1:20 (NLT). My online resource was biblegateway.com

 

Week 42

Yesterday I was thinking about The Messiah – mostly wondering why people in the 1st C were so interested in a character the OT hardly mentioned (I’d checked and knew The Messiah was only mentioned twice). But the follow-up problem was that my wordbook only mentioned The Messiah twice in the NT too. So today I took some time trying to figure out why such a low=profile character was so high-profile.
First (and an important background point): for several years I’ve read the same bible version – the NASB. And my wordbook is a listing of words found in that version.
Second: this year I’d switched versions to the NLT – which uses a bunch of words that are different from the NASB.
Third: I had to find a wordbook for the NLT.
Fourth: surprise! The NLT version uses the word Messiah 86-times.
Fifth: (this was my detectiving step). I randomly chose 4-verses where the NLT used Messiah (but the NASB didn’t). I found that where the NLT used Messiah:
NASB used the Expected One (margin: Coming One)
NASB used the Christ (margin: Messiah)
NASB used the Christ (margin: Messiah)
NASB used Christ (the margin: nothing).
So…because the NLT version uses the name The Messiah a lot more frequently than the NASB I get my explanation about why 1st century Jewish people were very interested in The Messiah.
But even though my question got answered the pay-off – unfortunately – seemed pretty minimal to me.

Note: quotes from Matthew 11:3 16:16 22:42 & 27:22 (NASB)

Week 42  John 4

Back in chapter 1 people asked John the Baptist if he was the Messiah and he said I am not the Messiah. (The question I was asking was: who is The Messiah?)
And now the Samaritan woman tells Jesus I know the Messiah will come.
So I’m wondering again: who in the world is The Messiah?
I looked up Messiah in my word book.. The name is used twice in the OT. Hmmm…
If I don’t find The Messiah in the OT does that mean he isn’t there? Not necessarily. It does mean that the term Messiah isn’t used in the bible version that I’m using.
Another thing – maybe the bible I’m reading used an alternate name. An alias. Maybe The Great Man. The Superlative Stranger. The Mysterious Prophet. Me not finding the title The Messiah doesn’t mean he isn’t pseudonymously there.
I decide on a couple of things. A) I figure that it’s not safe to say The Messiah is totally inconsequential in the OT. But B) I think I can say that even if The Messiah is operating under an alias he’s not a marquee OT person. That’s why I’m perplexed because what I’m seeing while I’m reading the gospels is that The Messiah seems to be a well-known & anticipated popular figure. But in the NT he seems to just mysterious appear as a legendary folk hero.

Note: quotes from John 1:20 & 4:25 (NLT). Messiah in the OT is Daniel 9:25-26 (NASB) (the note says Messiah = Anointed One)

Week 42  John 3

A long time ago I heard a story about a guy who had escaped from the Cambodian Killing Fields. He landed in a Thai refugee camp where someone gave him a bible. He treasured the bible because it was the best paper he could find for rolling his cigarette tobacco. Smoking his way through the bible he got to John 3 but before lighting up he read the verse for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
He didn’t believe in the Lord but the words about how God loved the world stuck with him.
That basic idea – that God loved the world – is a helpful point to get reminded about from time-to-time since other bible content seems to dispute it.
So there’s a couple of things for a bible reader to keep in mind. First: if I’m reading an episode in the bible and I get the sense that God hates the world then I’m coming away with an inaccurate sense of God’s feelings. Second: if I find a basic principle in the bible (for instance God loves the world & is working a plan to save people) then other things that I read – even things that sound like they’re contradicting it – don’t get to make the basic axiom non-axiomatic.

Note: quote from John 3:16 (NIV). Eventually the Cambodian cigarette-guy believed in the Lord.

Week 41  John

I was thinking that if a guy asked me which gospel writer devoted the highest percentage of his gospel to the actual words of Jesus then I’d say John – but that would be a guess.
So I thought I’d a) count the number of verses in each gospel then b) count verses with Jesus’ words then c) calculate the percentages.
Step One was to count the verses:
Matthew 1070
Mark 680
Luke 1150
John 880
Step Two was more problematic. Counting Jesus’ words verses would take way too much time. So I skipped Matthew-Mark-Luke.
But I did find 431 verses in John. 49%… which seemed like a fairly high percentage. But it’s not very accurate.
For example one time Jesus told the crowd he was the bread that came down out of heaven. His words. In the next verse some people are wondering how can he say I am the bread that came down from heaven? So his exact words quoted (and counted as his words). But Jesus didn’t say them the second time. So maybe I shouldn’t have counted them.
And there’s a couple of other places where I counted a whole verse but Jesus said almost nothing: remove the stone or I am he.
The What Percentage question is interesting enough. But a better question is not how much he said but what he meant by what he said. And my sense is that he says quite a few things in John that are pretty weighty head-scratchers.

Note: quotes from John 6:41 42 11:39 18:6 (NASB)

Week 40  Luke 24

Two men – Cleopas & an unnamed man – were walking from Jerusalem to the town of Emmaus. They had been followers of Jesus. But Jesus was dead & gone now.
Along the way they chanced on a stranger. They told him about Jesus:
He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people. But our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death, and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago.
That was it. The gospel from beginning to end. Jesus was a great teacher. He helped and consoled a lot of people. Generous. Kind. Gave wise advice. Great principles to live by. A big following…but powerful & murderous enemies too. So the story came to an abrupt end. Good guy. Good story. A lot of good memories.
But the stranger challenged their gospel story: wasn’t it clearly predicted by the prophets that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his time of glory?
Along the Emmaus Road Cleopas & his friend were having to rethink their gospel story (and they were flabbergasted to realize the stranger was actually Jesus).
The road trip had been an eye-opener for them. Their Short Gospel Story was a long way from being over.

Note: quotes from Luke 24:19-21 26 (NLT)
End-of-month reading report: 84% of reading completed in 75% of the year.