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Tag: Roman

Allowing God to Write Your Story

We are beginning to get very near the end of our journey as we continue working through the book of Acts. We are now in chapter 25 out of 28 chapters, and this morning we plan to cover both chapters 25 & 26.

Now last week, we read how Paul was on trial before the Governor Felix – and even before the trial began, Paul’s chances of being found innocent were pretty slim. Even though the charges against him were fairly weak, Paul was being accused by corrupt Jewish leaders (who were being represented by a corrupt lawyer) and he was being judged by a corrupt Roman Governor. So right from the beginning, the likelyhood of a fair trial was nearly non-existent.

But yet, God was ultimately in control, and in the end, the Governor Felix delayed giving any sort of verdict – hoping both to appease the Jews by keeping Paul in prison, but also hoping for some sort of bribe from Paul. 

Of course, even after keeping Paul in custody for about 2 years, Felix received no such bribe – but instead, often received clear and compelling presentations of the Gospel message.

Unfortunately, it seems that Felix never accepted that message – never put his faith in Christ. He had clearly heard the Gospel on numerous occasions over those two years – but as far as we know, he never accepted Christ, and was soon succeeded as governor by a man named Porcius Festus.

Now, when Fetus took over as governor, he immediately began to deal with the loose ends left behind by Felix – which included, of course, the case of Paul vs. the Jewish leaders. And so that’s what we’re going to look at today.

As I mentioned, we’re hoping to get through two chapters worth of material today, so we are going to be moving fairly quickly, but hopefully through it all, we’ll be able to observe God’s goodness and guidance in the life of Paul. We’ll also see how, even through less-than-ideal circumstances from a human point of view, God’s perfect will comes to pass in ways that no one would ever guess.

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King Jesus

For the last several weeks we have been looking at Paul’s second missionary journey. So far on this journey, Paul (along with Silas & Timothy) had revisited all of the churches that Paul had planted during his first missionary journey. Then after that, being joined by Dr. Luke in Troas, they went on to Macedonia to preach the Gospel to those who had never heard the Good News about Jesus!

Their first stop was in Philippi – and the first person who accepted their message was a woman named Lydia. After hearing the Gospel, she and her whole household believe in Christ and were baptized. From that point on, she invited Paul & his team to stay at her home – and it appears that her home become the central meeting place for the newly planted church in that city.

However, not all was smooth sailing for this missionary team. Before long a slave girl – who was a fortune teller empowered by a demon – began following them around the city, shouting after them. This went on for some time until finally, in the name of Jesus, Paul commanded the demon to leave the slave girl – and the demon immediately obeyed. This was wonderful news for this girl – who was now freed from the grip of this demon – but it was terrible news for the slave girl’s owners who had made a lot of money from her fortune telling!

Well, these slave owners stirred up the whole city against Paul & Silas – and the city officials had them beaten and thrown into prison. 

And we didn’t talk about this last week, but you might have noticed that we’re only told that Paul & Silas were beaten and thrown into prison – there was no mention of Timothy or Luke being taken as well. This is probably because Paul & Silas were Jews, but Timothy and Luke were Greek. As we noted last week, the city of Philippi was a Roman colony and as such, their Roman’ loyalties were very strong. Of course, this also meant that they reflected Rome’s unfavourable view of Jews at this time. The emperor Claudius had just expelled all the jews from the city of Rome because he saw them as rebellious, trouble-makers. And so it’s easy to see how the city of Philippi (as a Roman Colony) could quickly be convinced that Paul & Silas were some of those rebellious trouble-makers as well!

But of course, being beaten up and thrown into prison was no hinderance to the ministry of Paul & Silas. It didn’t matter their circumstances, they were able to joyfully praise the Lord and share the Gospel message to anyone who listened – even the belly of a dark prison!

What’s more, God had carefully arranged all of this to happen so that the jailer and his entire household could come to faith in Christ! As we read last week, as Paul and Silas were praying and singing in the middle of the night, a tremendous earthquake struck the prison, and all the prison doors flew open and the prisoner’s chains fell off! Well, of course, the jailer woke up and saw all the doors open and assumed the prisoners had all escaped! 

Now of course, the penalty for allowing a prisoner to escape was death! And so the jailer concluded that if the prisoners were all gone, he might as well kill himself as quickly and as painlessness as he could – since the Roman authorities would not likely be as kind!

But Paul quickly called out to the man “Stop! Don’t kill yourself! We are all here.”

And this is when the jailer realized that something was very different about these men. They had something that he wanted. And so as he brought them out, he fell before them and asked “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Well, Paul & Silas were able to tell the jailer exactly what He must to do to be saved – He had to believe in the Lord Jesus! And He did! Even in the middle of the night, the jailer brought them to his house, washed their wounds, gave them a meal, and He and his entire household were all baptized because they had all put their faith in Jesus Christ.

And so that brings us to our passage today! At this point, Paul & Silas are still in jail – or at least, under the guard of the jailer! Since they’ve been hanging out at the jailers house, I’d guess they probably didn’t return to get locked up in the actual prison cell after that – they had clearly proven to the jailer that they weren’t going to escape!

But regardless, their situation with the city officials was not yet resolved. So we’ll see what happens as we read on today.

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Peter & Cornelius – Two Lives Transformed

When we began our study of the book of Acts back in early summer, I mentioned to you that the title of this book may not be the most accurate. Of course, the author Luke didn’t name this book – it was written as a letter to a man named Theophilus. But today in most of our Bibles, this book is commonly referred to as ”The Acts of the Apostles”.

However, for the last several chapters that we’ve gone through, the story hasn’t revolved around the Apostles at all! We’ve seen God do some amazing things through the lives of guys like Stephan and Philip. These two were not apostles, but rather were administrators in the church – their job was to make sure all the widows and orphans and those in need were taken care of! But of course, that certainly didn’t discount them from sharing about Jesus wherever they went – and as we’ve seen – God used both of these guys to spread the Gospel far beyond the borders of Jerusalem!

And then last week, we were introduced to three new characters who all played a very significant role in the growth of the church! Most obviously, we saw the Holy Spirit totally transform Saul from being a murderous zealot trying to destroy the church into a passionate evangelist who would do more than most to build and strengthen the church! And in addition to Saul, we also met Barnabas & Ananias – again, not apostles, but just faithful men led by the Holy Spirit – and who played significant roles in the salvation and transformation of Saul.

So it really isn’t a book about the Acts of the Apostles – but rather it’s a book about the amazing Acts of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles and the many other faithful men and women who yielded themselves to the Spirit’s leading.

Which leads us now into today’s passage. Today the focus shifts back once again to the apostle Peter. And while we are going to see the Holy Spirit do some amazing things through Peter, perhaps more significantly, we’re going to see the Holy Spirit do some amazing things in Peter!

Because just like how Saul needed to be transformed from the inside out – so did Peter! And so do you and I!

All of us need the Holy Spirit to radically transform us to become more and more like Christ! And certainly that process had already begun for Peter some time ago, but we’re going to see another significant step in his journey towards Christ-likeness today.

We finished off last week with Saul being sent to his home town of Tarsus. He’s going to hang out there for a while – growing in his understanding of the Gospel and in his relationship with Christ – until Barnabas goes to find him in Acts chapter 11. And at that point they’ll go on to minister in Antioch and help start the first church there!

But until then, the story shifts back to follow Peter for a while. And there are three incidents in the next couple of chapters that are recorded for us from the life and ministry of Peter at this time – two shorter ones first – and then a much longer and more detailed one. 

And it initially seems like the three are just a selection of snapshots – just some random examples of the ministry that God was doing through Peter at this time. But I think Luke is doing more than just that. He’s writing about these particular events in the life & ministry of Peter for a reason. I believe he wants us to see, not only how the Holy Spirit was working in the world, but also to see how God was working in Peter’s life – transforming Him into the likeness of Christ. So let’s take a look.

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