Greenlakes Baptist

Acts 9:10-19 Checking God�s Facts

Once Saul is suitably subdued God goes about getting the man some instruction. As an enemy of the faith Saul has heard plenty of defenses for the beliefs of Christians and could probably cite those arguments and recall the passages of scripture they used rather easily. God sends Saul a man named Ananias. His message is that God will send Saul, now renamed Paul, to the Gentiles. Ananias, however believes God is mistaken. He reminds the Lord that this Saul is a persecutor not a promoter of Christ. Just in case God has forgotten, Ananias reminds God of the papers with which Saul entered the city and the women and men he has already imprisoned. The good news is that Ananias obeyed and Saul was baptized as a Christian. The good news for us is that God did not hold Ananias’ doubts against him or become impatient with his fears. God gave him a good answer as to what He was doing and reassured the man that Saul would neither capture nor drag him off. God frequently asks us to do things that seem a little ridiculous or even potentially troublesome, but if we are sure it is His voice we can know that He knows what he is doing.

Without Wax,

Dr. Dwight
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Acts 9:1-9 Mission Interrupted

Saul is headed out to destroy the heretic Jews who follow this Jesus as the Messiah. He has papers that will allow him privilege of arrest and deportation of anyone he arrests back to Jerusalem. As he nears the city Jesus forces the issue. Despite being the biggest enemy of Christianity of his time Saul is swung from persecution to promotion in one encounter. God appears to him on the road as a bright light. Jesus speaks to him and identifies Himself as God. This does not suddenly answer all of Saul’s or even our questions about how God can be one God yet at the same time be Father Son and Spirit. Nevertheless Saul is unable to deny that Jesus appeared as God and spoke to him as God and was indeed what He had claimed to be in all those sermons. Saul is given three days to ponder the meaning of this vision. Three days in the night of blindness after being led by the hand, like a child, in to the city he had expected to storm. I hope I am listening a little better than that to God. I would really rather not need such a dramatic and debilitating gesture to get my attention.

Without Wax,

Dr. Dwight
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Acts 8:25-40 A Mysterious Journey

Phillip was the great preacher of Samaria enjoying popularity, safety, and a quickly growing church. Then God send him elsewhere. First Phillip is commanded to stand by a stretch of road. We are not told how long he cooled his heels waiting for the right chariot to drive by. When it arrives and the man inside is reading the Bible Phillip knows this is his chance to tell the man of Jesus. The meeting went exactly as we all hope such meetings will go. Phillip explained, answered a few questions, and the man put his trust in Jesus to save him. The new convert initiated his own baptism, asking Phillip about it. Then the weird stuff started. First Phillip is snatched away so that the Ethiopian no longer sees him, then he shows up in Azotus and starts a walking preaching tour. He is removed from the site of some great ministry to partake of another aspect of serving God. It is a much less comfortable and amenable act of service than living and ministering in one town. As far as we know Phillip took the little teleportation in stride and just figured God wanted him to be preaching other places. God has never done anything this drastic in my life, but I wonder how ready any of us are to change our life for Jesus. If God told us would we leave our jobs to work for Him full time? If He gave us an opportunity for ministry that took us away from our hobbies would we make the change? If He called us to more time with our family and less time away would we stay home? I don’t know what the answer is in my life, but I know what I want it to be.

Without Wax,

Dr. Dwight
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Acts 8:1-24 Power and Price

In these early days of Christianity and in many places even today the clash of Christianity is a clash of power. Here in the west we have largely left behind any belief in the supernatural as a serious player in daily life. We dabble with it, read our horoscopes, play little board games, and so on. But if someone claimed they could curse us our most likely reaction would be laughter and disbelief. And far too often we are smug in thinking this attitude is somehow more scientific and enlightened and makes us better than the rest of the world. As Phillip enters Samaria, however, things are different. The biggest local celebrity is a magician. Not a stage magician all rabbits and wands, but a man considered to have great spiritual power and be able to affect the course of someone’s life. When Phillip comes to town and begins preaching God affirms his work with miraculous signs and the pretender to great power, Simon the magician, gives his life to this greater power of Jesus. When the apostles come, and others among the newly converted start showing miraculous signs, Simon thinks he’s got it all figured out. He waits to be let into the inner circle and learn the methods by which those preaching do the miracles. When there is no miracle in his life he asks to buy in to the power sharing operation. His very request reveals his heart. He did not come to Jesus out of love for Christ or a sense of needing a savior, he came looking for a better power source from which to perform the same old act. His heart is not changed until his sin is revealed. When the apostles tell him that his attitude is wrong Simon repents and asks the apostles to pray for him. How many of us follow God hoping to get some sort of good luck or special deal from Him. How many of us started out the Christian life knowing we desperately needed saving from our evil deeds and ended up pouting when God did not fulfill our prayer for a particular romance to start or job to open up. God does exert His power for His children, but is that why we follow Him?

Without Wax,

Dr. Dwight
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Acts 7 Swift Public Justice

Stephen is one of the deacons or servants appointed by the church to oversee the distribution of charity to the widows. He starts preaching and many are brought to Jesus through his work, so, of course, the powers that be want him stopped. After his arrest Stephen preaches a very long sermon detailing god’s history with Israel around Moses and Abraham, and even Solomon. He then accuses them of being just like their forefathers in persecuting those sent from God and disobeying God even as Israel did by worshipping the golden calf in the desert when God has told them not to worship statues anymore. At his accusation the rulers drag him out of the city and they all throw rocks at him until he is dead and buried under a mound of rocks. People who think they are working for God do not like being told they are working against Him. Yet that is the truth of this situation. Jesus had proven Himself as God by rising from the dead. He had proven Himself to be sent from God by His miracles and His teaching. Nevertheless, the religious establishment refused to recognize Him and focused not on the healing He did, but whether He did it on the Sabbath, because no servant of God would ever violate the additions to God’s law they had made about the Sabbath. Whatever God does or says there is always a way to deny it, a fault to find. But let us not fall prey to believing that because I cannot explain how God did something or why God did something then He must not have done it.

Without Wax,

Dr. Dwight
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Acts 6 Sharing the Load

Here the apostles are confronted with an administrative problem. There is a perception of unfairness when it comes to financially helping the widows in the church. Some claim one group is getting preferential treatment and the apostles are asked to check it out. They don’t. The leaders of the church contend that they need all their time to study the Bible, teach it, and pray. They do not have time to run the food distribution charity. Instead they insist that the congregation choose men of good character to oversee the operation. All the apostles do is lay hands upon and pray over the ones chosen. Here begins the distribution of responsibility to those beyond the apostles. Here begins the model that the pastor does not do all the ministry. He is responsible to teach and pray and study as his primary responsibility. Other duties are, of course taken on and other ministry is done by the pastor but it cannot interfere with the praying, studying the Bible and teaching the Bible the pastor does. Please folks, support your pastors not just with the money you give, but with help to run and accomplish all the church is to accomplish for Jesus. They cannot do it all. By the way, for those of you at Green Lakes, thank you that you do so much to free me up to be a better teacher and preacher of God’s Word.

Without Wax,

Dr. Dwight
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Acts 5:33-42 They Can Be Taught

As the assembly gets ready to kill Peter and John for their refusal to quit preaching about Jesus a lone voice rises up. A respected teacher of the law has been observing events and leads the chief priests off their desired path. He notes that other pretenders to Messiahship have arisen in the last years and each has died within a few weeks of the death of their founders. If this is just another one of those, they need do nothing and soon it will all be an old story. But I do not believe the miracles involved this time escape his notice. Gamaliel wonders if these men did miraculously get out of prison, he wonders if they might be telling the truth. He understands what everyone else is forgetting in the heat of the moment, opposing God is the best way to get yourself destroyed. If these two men are from God it is not they who will be killed, but the council will be diminished in some way until they can no longer try to kill Peter and John. Gamaliel suggests setting the men free and the council does so. Peter and John are whipped for what they had done and left praising God that they got to suffer for the name of Jesus. I’m not too keen on suffering, but I can understand their joy. God just used them to outface the very men whom had Jesus killed. God can use you, even do miracles in your life as you follow Him. He never promises He will keep you from all harm as the whipping of Peter and john testifies, but He will do all He promises.

Without Wax,
Dr. Dwight
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Acts 5:12-32 God�s Message and Miracle

In Jerusalem the followers of Jesus continued to gain respect and numbers. All the people held them in respect for their lives, their generosity, and the miracles of healing that the apostles kept performing. Having failed to stop the movement by killing Jesus, the chief priests are understandably frustrated. They imprison the apostles they can catch (Peter and John) then hold them in jail. An angel comes in the night and releases the men with a message to go and proclaim the message of Jesus in the Temple. So Peter and John go right back to the place they got arrested and start doing what they got arrested for. Sometimes following God is bewildering. The disappearing/appearing act causes great consternation to the ruling priests, who then bring them back in, this time to stand before the council not to rot in prison. I guess they figured it wouldn’t take any better this time than the last. When the chief priest demands that Peter and John stop preaching about Jesus, they reply again “We must obey God rather than men.” For the chief priests it is an exercise in insanity, doing the same thing and expecting a different result. For Peter and John they have achieved the result God had in mind. The chief priests have heard the gospel again and they understand that imprisoning the apostles just won’t help their cause. The lesson is, if you are to be insane, don’t do it by spitting repeatedly into the wind of God’s will, there are better ways to get a shower.

Without Wax,

Dr. Dwight
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Acts 5:1-11 The Scary Story of Greed

Some parts of scripture are difficult for me. They question God’s justice in ordering Israel to wipe out the Canaanites. Some scriptures are not quick enough to condemn wrong behavior in the men of God described. Usually these difficulties stem from my sense of fairness. The passages that bother me seem unfair or unjust in what happens. Here that it not the case. Annanias and Sapphira knew exactly what they were doing. He told her he was holding back some of the money and pretending that they gave it all. Each was questioned individually about the price of the land, so neither died because of the other’s sin. And Peter says there was no compulsion to give all the money from the sale. They could have easily given nothing or given a portion or even given the amount they gave and it would have been no problem. The problem is that they lied to God. They told the church that they were giving the entire proceeds of the sale of their land to the church (giant red flag number one, the need to announce it). God punishes them for their lie with death, perhaps a little extreme, though it just meant an express ticket to heaven rather than suffering through the coming persecution in Jerusalem. Well, OK, death for lying is really extreme, but one can see how very important it was to convince the church very early that no one should lie to God. Anyway this scares me, in that perhaps my wrongdoing is more significant than I had supposed, but it does not shake my faith through some sense of unfairness.

Without Wax,

Dr. Dwight
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Acts 4 The Boldness Of Believers

What started as a healing and preaching time turned into an arresting time. The chief priests of the Jews and the Sanhedrin arrested and brought Peter and John in for questioning. They preached the fact that Jesus rose from the dead as predicted in the Old Testament to this group of men as well. The council demanded that Peter and John quit preaching Jesus, but it was of no avail. The men informed the chief priests that though they were loyal Jews and wanted to obey the council they could not. It was more important to obey God than men. After the chief priests released Peter and John in a sort of confused muddle they went back to the other believers. Everyone praised God for their deliverance and for the rapid growth of the church in Jerusalem. They praised God for giving them the courage to keep preaching despite all the official opposition their preaching generated. Sometimes we need to look at the rules made by men and obey God’s rules instead. Primarily this is in the area of free speech, a right supposedly protected in the U.S. As long as we are free to declare our beliefs and hold those beliefs in opposition to the prevailing popular thought of our day, we are fine. But there are always those who would rather eliminate us fully from the national conversation and silence our call to believe in Jesus as the only way to find God the Father. Let us stand up, let us refuse to be silenced.

Without Wax,

Dr. Dwight
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