February 23, 2026 –  Don’t Waste the Healing — Acts #30

David Chupp Acts , ,

February 23, 2026 –  Don’t waste the healing — Acts #30
Acts 9:26–30 

Today, we discuss the purpose of healing in God’s story.  Now, it may seem obvious that the purpose of healing is to remove disease, restore physical function, and relieve discomfort.  But the scriptures are clear that God has an even higher purpose when He heals.  And if we focus only on the healing itself, we miss the most important thing.  

Acts 9:32-35   Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda.

So Peter is traveling west of Jerusalem and along the coast, through Joppa and on to Caesarea.  (You should be able to draw from memory a quick map of Israel, at least with the Sea of Galilee, Jordan River, and Dead Sea, along with a few major cities.)  Note the following on the map below:  Lydda is the Old Testament town of Lod. Joppa is the port from which Jonah sailed when he was running from God (modern-day Tel Aviv).  Note the town of Gaza, for you are, of course, very familiar with the Gaza Strip.  And the New Testament port of Caesarea, from which Saul departed on a boat back to his hometown of Tarsus.  

Peter is traveling from Jerusalem to Lydda and then to Joppa in our scripture today.  He is following the path Philip took earlier.  We read about that in Acts 8.

Acts 8:40  But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through, he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Peter is back in the same area, teaching the new followers and spreading the good news of Jesus.  And in the book of Acts, Luke tells us two stories of healing:  a man who had been paralyzed for years and a girl who had died.  Luke, whom Paul calls “the beloved physician” (Col. 4:14), focuses more on healing in his Gospel and the book of Acts than in other New Testament books, and frequently provides more detailed descriptions of physical problems.  But in our scripture today in Acts 9, we will see more than just two miraculous healings. Because here, Luke pulls the curtain back a little and shows us not just that God heals, but why God heals—and what healing is meant to accomplish.  

These are powerful miracles. But Luke’s focus is not on the person being healed, or on Peter, or even on the physical healing itself. Luke keeps pointing us to one truth:  Healing is a signpost. It points to the glory of Christ and invites people to believe.

Acts 9:32-35   Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda. There, he found a man named Aeneas, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed. And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” And immediately he rose. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord. 

Aeneas has been bedridden and paralyzed for eight years. Eight years is a long time.  Long enough to endure many unsuccessful treatments.  Long enough for hope to disappear.  Long enough for people to stop expecting any change.   But then Peter comes in and says something very specific:

Acts 9:34  And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.”

“Make your bed,” may seem an odd thing for Peter to say.    He is saying, “Your time of lying in a bed all day is over. You don’t need that now.  Roll up your bedding and resume life.”  Now, what was the result of this healing?  Verse 34 ends with this:  “And immediately he rose.”  But this is not the end of the story; it is only the beginning.  Keep reading.

Acts 9:35  And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord.1

Luke does not say, “They admired Peter,” or “They were impressed.”  He says they turned to the Lord.  The healing was real. The healing was compassionate.  God wants to heal his children.  But the primary reason for the healing was evangelistic — it revealed the living power of Jesus.  That is the reason for the healing.

The miracle is not the end of the story, but only the beginning.  The healing was not the destination; it was but a doorway to faith.  Next, we meet Tabitha.

Acts 9:36  “Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity.

She isn’t introduced by illness. She’s introduced by her life:  “She was always doing good and helping the poor.”  What a great way to describe someone, Dr. Luke.

I was in the third year of Medical School and had just started seeing patients in Grady Hospital.  My first rotation was in the surgery department.  Morning rounds went like this: The medical students and interns gathered several hours before rounds to examine the patients and collect all labs.  And the whole group traveled from room to room, a parade of white coats.  If it were your assigned patient, you would present the patient to the team like this:

“This is a 67-year-old male who presented to this hospital with right lower quadrant abdominal pain.  He is status post appendectomy 2 days ago. He is afebrile with stable vital signs and a well-healing incision.  Labs are significant for…. “  You had better have memorized all the facts, vital signs, and lab results, for if they asked you and you didn’t know, they would then ask you why you didn’t want this patient to get good care.  It could be brutal for the students.  But then, later in the year, I did my first rotation in pediatrics.

We had this wonderful Pediatrician who was the attending doctor for our team.  He had been a private practice pediatrician for 25 years and was now teaching at Egleston Hospital.  I remember the first day on rounds well.  One of my friends had the first patient and began the presentation outside the patient’s room just as we had done in surgery.  “This is a seven-year-old female who presented with fever and diffuse bruising 2 days ago…” He went on to describe the pertinent labs and her current therapy.  When he was done, our attending doctor calmly asked, “What is her name?”  Who in her family is with her?  Does she have any brothers or sisters?  What is her favorite color?  Do you think she is scared?”

My friend just stood there silently.  And our attending said, “Remember, you are treating a little girl, not a disease.  She is definitely scared, and you can’t offer her any comfort if you don’t take the time to get to know her.  Her parents need to know that you care, or you will not be giving her good care.”  So Dr. Luke was not from the surgery department at Grady Hospital.  He tells us something about Tabitha.  She did many good works to help the poor in her town and became well known for them.  With that in mind, let’s get back to the story.

Acts 9:36-39  Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days, she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter rose and went with them. And when he arrived, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them.

You get this touching picture of the people she had helped, likely poor people who loved Tabitha, wearing the clothes she made for them.  It always leaves a hole in the world when someone dies who was a force in this world for Jesus.  My mind, like yours, goes to many funerals I have attended for people whose Christian walk made an amazing difference in the lives of others.   And here in Joppa, they aren’t just mourning a person; they are mourning love, kindness, practical mercy. Tabitha’s life had already been a testimony.  But at the time of her death, she was just getting started.

Acts 9:40-41   But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed; and turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then, calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive.

A miracle of resurrection, very similar to what we saw when Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter back in Luke 8.  Remember, He sent everyone out of the room except Peter, James, and John.  Jesus took her by the hand and said almost the same thing Peter said to the girl in Acts 9.  Here we see  Peter walking in the footsteps of Jesus.  But again, this resurrection is not the end of the story but is only the beginning.  Then we see the results.

Acts 9:42  And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

This is the result. There it is again.  Not just amazement.  Not just a celebration, but the birth of faith.  The healings in Lydda and Joppa did not end with healthier people — they ended with new believers.  God used healing to reveal His mercy, His power, and His Son.

Tabitha had already brought glory to God through quiet, faithful service. Her healing would now amplify that witness.  Sometimes God is glorified by a life that displays compassion.  Sometimes God is glorified by a miracle that displays power.  But this is the result.  God is made known to people, and God is glorified.   Throughout scripture, God uses healing as a means to reveal Himself to people.  

After delivering Israel from Egypt, God heals the bitter waters of Marah, and He tells them:

Exodus 15:26   If you will diligently listen to the voice of Yehovah your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am Yehovah, your healer.

I am your healer.  The healing isn’t just practical — it’s revelatory.  God is showing Israel who He is.   Healing becomes a means of self-disclosure.

And do you remember Naaman, the Aramean military leader who had leprosy?   He comes to Elisha, who tells him to wash in the Jordan River.   And when he is healed, Naaman says:

2 Kings 5:15  “And he said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.”

The healing leads to confession.  It leads to worship.  It glorifies the God of Israel before a Gentile military leader.  And Naaman returns to his country with knowledge of God.  His healing brings the knowledge of God and glory to God.  That is the point. There are so many stories in the Scriptures that illustrate this point.  Just one more.  When Jesus is told that his friend Lazarus is very sick, He says:

John 11:4   This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.

That is one of the clearest purpose statements in Scripture.  Jesus even delays coming, allowing Lazarus to be dead for 4 days — not out of indifference, but so that a greater glory might be displayed.   When Lazarus walks out of the tomb, many believe in Jesus.  And it becomes the final straw that leads the religious leaders to pursue Jesus’ death.    

When we discuss the Lazarus story, someone always asks, “I wonder what happened to Lazarus after that?”   The scriptures don’t say it, but you have to know that everywhere Lazarus went, he was a billboard pointing to the power and the glory of God.  Yes, Jesus wanted to heal his friend.  He did not want his friend to die.  But his mission here on earth was to bring glory to the Father, and this resurrection and his own crucifixion and resurrection brought glory to God.

We can’t miss this important point.  We pray for healing as if that is what we need.  Every time we meet, we pray for healing.  We text each other prayer requests for people to be healed.  And Yehovah is a God of great compassion.  He desires our healing.  In fact, He created this world to be a place with no illness or disease.  But sin cursed the world.  So we all suffer.  We all need healing. 

We have celebrated many healings in our congregation in the past several years.  As a doctor, I can tell you many instances of when I saw miraculous healing of a deadly disease or an advanced cancer.  And there have been times I have seen God’s people pray fervently in large numbers for a healing that did not happen.  It can be frustrating to see some healed and others not.  But we have to remember that healing is never the endpoint.  As in these stories in the Scripture, healing is good; healing is out of God’s compassionate heart.  But healing is for so much more than the relief of our physical problems or pain.  It is to bring glory to God.  It is to bring others to the knowledge of the God who heals.

Don’t waste the healing.  There is such a danger that we become so focused on physical needs or so fascinated by physical healing that we forget the most important part.  To bring glory to God, to make him known to others.  That is our purpose.

So what are people seeing in us?  In Lydda and Joppa, people saw something they could not explain — and it led them to Jesus.  We may not be called to raise the dead.  But we are called to tell others about the one who can raise the dead.   We can bring glory to God for the healings we see, to let people know it is not just about the healing.  It is about the God behind the healing.   We are called to live and serve in ways that point beyond ourselves. 

1 Corinthians 10:31  “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Colossians 3:17  “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

When God answers prayer… give Him glory.
When God brings restoration… name His kindness.
When God works in your life… tell the story in a way that leads people to Christ.
Because in the end, the purpose of every act of divine healing is this:
That people would see the power and compassion of Jesus — and turn to the Lord.

1.  Sharon is the Hebrew word for “field”, and usually refers to the area of fertile land on the coast extending just south of Mount Carmel to south of Joppa.  In Song of Solomon 2:1, the King James version translated the Hebrew phrase as “Rose of Sharon,” leaving out the definite article – it is actually “rose of the sharon” (field).  Translations before the King James had translated the Hebrew more literally as “rose of the field.”

February 10, 2026 –  Persecution and Peace — Acts #29

David Chupp Acts , ,

February 10, 2026 –  Persecution and Peace — Acts #29
Acts 9:26–30 

So let’s review where we are in Acts 9:  Saul was persecuting the followers of Jesus until he encountered Jesus himself on the road to Damascus.  Then he spends 3 years in Arabia to hear the word from God and to practice sharing Jesus with others.  He returns to Damascus, but the Jewish leaders and the governor seek to kill him, and he escapes being lowered in a basket out of the city.  He returns to Jerusalem, but the Jesus followers there are scared of him.  Barnabas serves as a mediator to bring Saul to the apostles, and Saul is welcomed.  That leads us to our scripture this morning:

Acts 9:28-30   So he [Saul] went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists. But they were seeking to kill him. And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.”

So Barnabas got the Jesus followers and Saul together, but it didn’t take long for Saul to get in trouble with the “Helenists” in the city.  Why did they get so upset with Saul?  These “Helenists” are Jews who grew up outside of Israel in the Greek/Roman culture and speak Greek.1  This is the same group that Stephen was speaking to in Acts 6.  This is the group that went to the Sanhedrin and accused Stephen of blasphemy, which led to his stoning.  And once again, they get angry.  Imagine how they feel.  Here is Saul, one of the members of that Sanhedrin who voted to stone Stephen, now saying the very things to them that Stephen said about Jesus.  They see this as ultimate betrayal.  So now they are seeking to kill Saul.  Notice it is the Greek-speaking Jews who are after Paul and not the Jewish leaders, not the Temple authorities.   But Jerusalem is too hot for Saul, so the apostles arrange to send him to the coastal city of Caesarea to catch a boat to his hometown of Tarsus

And this is where we will leave Saul for a bit, after once again having to flee for his life.  Then Acts continues with a surprising verse:

Acts 9:31  So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

Slow down a minute. After this death threat and yet another escape for Saul, you don’t expect the next verse to talk about a time of peace. But now, there was a time of relative peace for the followers of Jesus, and their number multiplied.  Why had the persecution from the Jewish leaders died down at this time?

I think there are 3 primary reasons. First, because the followers of Jesus were scattered.   

They had all been centered in Jerusalem since the miracle at Pentecost.  They had grown to such a large number (at least 8-10,000) that the Jewish rulers felt threatened.  They were all gathering in the Temple grounds to meet, and there they were preaching about Jesus.  They were right in the faces of these Jewish leaders and were seen as a threat.

When Stephen was stoned to death for blasphemy, they all feared for their lives, and most of them left Jerusalem.  Once the crowd was gone and the rest into hiding, the pressure was relieved.  Those in charge of the temple no longer saw them, so they no longer felt threatened.  Less visibility equals less friction.  Out of sight, out of mind.  They didn’t care so much about small gatherings of believers in the countryside.  Well, there was one in their group who cared very much.

Saul still cared.  He asked for letters to hunt them down all over and have them bound and carried back to Jerusalem for punishment.  So the second reason that persecution died down was what happened to Saul.  When Saul met Jesus and discontinued his attack on Jesus’ followers and then disappeared, the persecution died down.  When he returns three years later, His trouble comes not from the Jewish leaders but from Greek-speaking Jews in Jerusalem.  Without Saul’s driving force on the persecution of Jesus’ followers, the religious authorities in Jerusalem just didn’t seem nearly as concerned about it.

We see what a lightning rod Saul was, first against Jesus, and now for Jesus.  Saul was the powerful driving force behind the persecution. Now you can better understand what Jesus did on the road to Damascus.   With this change, Jesus brought the persecution of his followers to a standstill and, at the same time, created the most dynamic missionary for his movement.  One man coming to Jesus makes a world of difference.

Finally, the third reason for the pause in persecution is that Jewish leaders had other problems brewing.   Something happened in Rome around that time that had a significant effect on matters.  Caligula became emperor of Rome in 37 AD and began a reign marked by cruelty, megalomania, and insanity.  He declared himself god above all other gods. In 40 AD, Caligula issued an order to place a statue of himself in the Jewish Temple’s Holy of Holies.

As you would expect, resistance by the Jews was swift and intense, with mass protests, strikes, and other forms of passive resistance. At one point, the historian Josephus notes that “tens of thousands” of Jews gathered in Tiberias for a 40-day protest.2 The governor of Judea at the time, knowing it would cause war, deliberately delayed the placement of Caligula’s statue.  He was successful in postponing the placement until Caligula was assassinated in Rome in 41 AD, killed by members of his own Senate who judged him to be insane.   

This immediate threat from Rome far overshadowed the troubles of the Jesus followers, so there was a pause in the persecution.  It would, however, soon be back.  In 44 AD, James, one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, was beheaded by Herod Agrippa I.  Peter will be back in prison again, and Saul will suffer all kinds of persecution.   This is but a brief, temporary time of peace. But I want you to consider how this ebb and flow of persecution affected Jesus’ movement.  

After Stephen was stoned, persecution ramped up tremendously.  Under Saul’s leadership, followers of Jesus were being taken bound to the temple courts to be whipped, beaten, and imprisoned.  Their homes were raided.  And so many fled to other parts of the country.

But when they fled, they took Jesus with them.  The towns they settled in became new centers for the Jesus movement to spread.  And their numbers increased dramatically.  Persecution, meant to destroy the movement, actually had the opposite effect, causing it to spread throughout the country and grow tremendously.   

God did not cause the persecution of the early followers.  He did not want his people to be terrorized, beaten, and imprisoned.  Evil men in high places made that decision.  God did not cause it, but he used it.  He took a bad situation, persecution, and made it work for good.

We see this pattern all through the Bible.  Take, for example, the story of Joseph.  You know the story of Joseph and his 11 brothers.   They were all jealous of Joseph.  It seemed their father showed more favor to Joseph than to any of them.  And their jealousy led to the day when they considered killing him, but instead sold their brother into slavery.  And you know how he ended up in Egypt and, through a series of amazing events, came to hold a position of authority, second only to the Pharaoh.  And you know how his brothers, because of the famine, came to Egypt for grain.  And you know the end of the story, in the final chapter of the book of Genesis.  Joseph’s father dies, and his brothers fear that Joseph, the second most powerful man in the most powerful country in the world, will finally seek his revenge on them for selling him into slavery.  And what does Joseph say?

Genesis 50:20   As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

Or:  What you intended for evil, God intended for good.  

But let me ask you, when Joseph was thrown into a pit and sold into slavery, did he think that was good?  When he was falsely accused and thrown in prison, did he think that was good?  And let me ask you a better question.  Did God think those things were good?

God by no means wanted Joseph’s brothers to treat him poorly.  God did not want Joseph’s brothers to succumb to sin.   He didn’t want Potiphar’s wife to entice Joseph and then falsely accuse him and have him thrown in prison.  God didn’t do that or approve of it. But hear this:  In the end, the circumstances don’t matter.  No matter what evil threw at Joseph, evil didn’t have the last word.  God did not stop people from doing evil; he rarely does that.  But what He always does is to take the evil meant against his people and turn it to good.  

It is the same in our passage in Acts.  What these evil men (including Saul) meant for evil purposes, this persecution of the followers of Jesus, God turns it around and causes the persecution not to diminish the group, but to cause it to spread and increase.  God was saddened by the response of those who would persecute his people.   It breaks his heart when his people turn against each other.  But again, the circumstances do not matter, because God always has the last word.   His will will be done.  He will work it all out to accomplish His purposes.  That brings us back to our scripture this morning.

Acts 9:31  So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

So we come to this time of peace in our scripture this morning, when the followers of Jesus are not under persecution, and they can worship freely.  It was the storm of persecution that led to the church’s spread and growth.  So what happens during this time of peace?  Again, the church grows. 

The circumstances are irrelevant.  Whether it is persecution or peace, God’s people grow.   This world is full of evil people doing evil things.  The Scriptures say that the whole earth is being defiled by sin.  Look at how Isaiah describes it:

Isaiah 24:4-6   The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth languish. The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants, for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse devours the earth….

Isaiah says that our entire planet, which God created as good, suffers and mourns under the weight of sin.  It is full of evil and evil people.  Sin has cursed our world.  So it does not operate as God created it.  There were no natural disasters in the Garden of Eden.  There were no tornadoes, no tsunamis, no hurricanes.  But our world today is not like the garden God made for us.  It is broken.  So you have to expect what we call “natural disasters” to happen. 

Jesus spoke of 2 disasters that had recently occurred.  We find that in Luke 13:

Luke 13:1-5   There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Jesus tells of 2 disasters.  Evil Pilate killing people on the very grounds of the Temple, and a tower that fell in Siloam and killed 18 people.  And for both, he asks them if those who suffered did so because they were worse sinners.  Because people in Jesus’ day felt that God caused or allowed bad things to happen to bad people.  If something bad happened, then you must have sinned.  Remember Job?  Remember the disciples asking Jesus whose sin caused the man to be born blind?    

Sadly, people still think this way.  I have heard people say that if they follow God’s commandments, then God will protect them from disaster.  But Jesus tells us that is not the way God works.  Evil and disaster happen because God gave humanity free choice, and all of us chose sin.  And what is really important is not the disaster of the tower nor Pilate’s slaughter.  What is really important is that we choose to repent of the disaster that we have all brought on our own lives, the disaster of our own sin.   But who the tower falls on is not determined by who is good and who is bad – because we are all bad.  None of us is good.  We all sin and fall short.

Isaiah tells us that natural disasters are only natural in that they are the natural result of sin on the earth.  So don’t blame God when storms or tornadoes or floods come, when towers fall, or evil men commit murder.  That is not the way He meant for the world to be.  And praise Him, one day He will redeem and restore this world to the way He meant for it to be.  But until then, we have to understand that we live in a defiled world full of catastrophes.  And it is the fault of humanity, not God.

But again, hear the good news:  If you belong to Jesus, then learn the lesson of Acts 9.  Learn the lesson of Joseph: Again, the circumstances are irrelevant.   Because each of us lives in a broken world, we all have to expect some bad things to happen.  Things that God never intended to exist in this world.  Things like car accidents, sickness, cancer, theft, child abuse, and murder.  That is not the world God created, but the one we defiled.   But none of those things matter in the long run.  As we see in Joseph’s life and in Acts here, when bad times come, God works them for good.  When peaceful times come, God works for good as well.  God uses times of storm and times of calm.  What sinful people and this defiled world intend for evil, God intends for good.  

And we need that ebb and flow in our own lives.  There are seasons of pressure when we are moved, and there are seasons of calm when we are allowed to grow.  

Anyone doing bodybuilding or weight training will tell you that this is the cornerstone of resistance training.  You push a muscle to its limits, increase the weight, and apply pressure to it. Then you rest it, and it grows.  We now know that what is happening in the muscle is the formation of microtears in the muscle fibers, which the body recognizes as a signal to rebuild stronger to protect against further tears.  You can not achieve results if you don’t put stress on the muscle.  Working out with light weights that do not stress the muscle will not give results.  Similarly, you also can’t see results unless you allow the muscle to recover.  Overtraining, by not allowing time to rest, will also lead to poor results.   You need times of pressure and times of rest.

We need this similar ebb and flow of pressure and peace to develop into the people God wants us to be.  Situations of pressure lead us to see the need for growth, and times of peace give us time to grow.  We see this in the life of Jesus.  There were times when he was in the midst of crowds and times of confrontation.  And he often retreated and withdrew from the crowds for times of peace, for times of prayer.  Times of intense teaching and healing were often followed by times of solitude.  

Even creation echoes this pattern.  There is the growing season, and there is time to let the ground rest.   There is spring, and there is winter.   And God established this pattern for us to live with 6 days to work and one day to rest, to Sabbath. We need both times.  Too much pressure can crush us. Too much peace can soften us.  We will experience times of pressure and times of peace in our lives, and God will use both for our good.

So what season are you in?  A time of testing or pressure, or a time of peace and rest?  If you are in a season of pressure, God may be refining you, pruning some aspect of your life.  Or he may be redirecting you. It may be time for some change.  If you are in a season of peace, that is not the time to coast.  It is the time to deepen your prayer life, redouble your efforts to study the word, and strengthen your faith.  

Whether life comes at you with times of pressure or times of peace, the question to ask is not “Why is this happening?” but instead, “How, Jesus, do you want to refine me in this season?”   

Again, the circumstances life throws at us can be very difficult, but know this: your circumstances do not get the last word; God does.   Or as our friend, whom we left in Tarsus, would say, 

Romans 8:28 “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Or as Joseph would say, “What you intended for evil, God intended for good.”

God is at work in your life every day, taking whatever circumstances life gives you and ultimately causing them to work for your good.  We rejoice today, knowing we have a good, good Father who only gives us good gifts. 

1.  Please see note regarding the term “Helenists” in Acts #28.
2.  Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.1.1.

February 3, 2026 –  But Barnabus…— Acts #28

David Chupp Acts , , , , , , ,

February 3, 2026 –  But Barnabus…— Acts #28
Acts 9:26–30 

We last left Saul in Acts 9, traveling to Arabia to spend some time with God in the wilderness.   His teachers had misled him in interpreting scripture into believing that Jesus was a fraud, and he needed to receive the truth directly from God. So he went to the place where God speaks, the wilderness, and spent 3 years in Arabia, 

In Saul’s day, Arabia referred to the entire region east of Egypt, including the Sinai Peninsula, and west of Israel. Though we have no idea what his itinerary was, I think he likely went to the same mountain of speaking that Moses and Elijah went to, Mount Sinai.

All of Arabia was under the control of the Nabateans, as far north as Damascus. They were descendants of Ishmael and initially nomadic.  They arrived in this region and displaced the Edomites, descendants of Esau.  While in Arabia, Saul likely also spent time in the capital and economic center of Nabataea, Petra.  There, he could practice his trade of leatherwork and tent making as he sought God’s truth in preparation for his work of spreading the Gospels.  

You have probably seen pictures of Petra, a city carved into the desert cliffs.  You enter the city through a narrow passage known as the Siq. This 3/4 mile winding gorge is as narrow as 10 feet in some places, with cliff walls extending as high as 500 feet.

You reach the end, and it opens up on Petra’s most famous building, the Treasury.  A building carved into the sandstone cliffs.  (You may have seen this building in one of the Indiana Jones movies.)

And Petra was an excellent place for Saul to begin his mission.  As God told Ananias:

Acts 9:15  Go, for he [Saul] is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.

Saul’s mission was to the Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel.  Petra was at the crossroads of trade routes from the east to Egypt and became a very wealthy city.  This resulted in a highly diverse population, many of whose members had Jewish ancestry.  So it became a place where Saul could practice his witness to Gentiles, but Gentiles who had some knowledge of Jewish scripture and ways.  And because it was the capital city, Saul might have the opportunity to encounter the king there.  So Saul spent 3 years away from Israel in Arabia.

Acts 9:23-25   But after 3 years, Paul returned to Damascus, where he first met Jesus.“When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night to kill him, but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.

Not quite the reception he had hoped for.  Some Jewish leaders conspired against him, but in 2 Corinthians, Paul provides more detail on this plot.  It originated with the governor of Damascus.

2 Corinthians 11:32-33   At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.

Now, why did the governor of Damascus want to arrest Saul?  Scripture tells us that he was under King Aretas.   Aretas reigned over the area of Damascus, but his capital was in Petra.  This suggests that Saul encountered difficulties with the King while in Petra.

Paul was smuggled out of the city by lowering him in a “basket” (or net).  And now he travels to Jerusalem.  Since it has been three years since he left his Pharisee friends, he hopes he will not be a wanted man there and that he will find acceptance among other Jesus followers in Jerusalem.  But would the followers of Jesus accept him?

Acts 9:26-30    And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. And he spoke and disputed with the Hellenists. But they were seeking to kill him. And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.

Their initial reaction was fear of him.  They thought he was pretending to be a follower of Jesus to infiltrate their group.  The last they heard of Saul, he was putting their friends to death. So let’s see:  He wasn’t welcome in Damascus, not by his former friends in the Sanhedrin, and now not even among the followers of Jesus.   It looked like Saul had no place to call home now.  But the next two words are very important…”but Barnabas.”

Barnabus plays a crucial role here.  Everyone was too afraid to get close enough to Saul to see if he was a genuine follower.   They were scared.  But Barnabus was willing to take the risk to approach Saul.  And because he did, see what Luke tells us happened next.  Saul can preach boldly about Jesus in Jerusalem because Barnabas took a chance on him. Let’s look at this character Barnabus and see what made him different than these other followers who were too scared to reach out to Saul. 

First, notice that Luke doesn’t single out a few scared disciples. He says, “They were all afraid of him.”  Fear had consensus.  That is usually the case.  But there was Barnabus.  Do you think Barnabus was scared, too?  Of course, he was.  But the difference was that when everyone else stepped back in fear, Barnabus stepped forward in faith.  He was not being naive.  He was not being reckless.  But he had the faith that God could really change people, even an enemy like Saul.  

What would God have done without Barnabas, who was able to convince the apostles to accept Saul?  What would have happened to Saul’s mission if Barnabas hadn’t taken that risk?  What would God have done?  As we discussed over a month ago, whatever God wills to happen will happen.  If Barnabas had not stepped up, God’s plan for Barnabas would have been thwarted, but not God’s plan for the world.  As we saw before, as with Jonah, he may have given Barnabas another chance, or, as with King Saul, he may have found someone else who would be obedient.  God loves to give us second chances to do the right thing, but he will not allow one man’s disobedience to derail his plans.

By approaching Saul, Barnabas was risking his safety, his reputation, and his standing with the apostles if Saul was not sincere.  And Barnabas had no guarantee that Saul had changed.  He had been gone for 3 years, and the last time they saw him, he was hunting them.  If Saul was lying, then Barnabas risked looking foolish and endangering himself and the others.  Faith often includes the possibility of being wrong. But Barnabas chooses to trust God’s work over his own fear.  This is the risk faith requires.   But this is who Barnabus has always been.  

Let’s take a quick look at what we know about Barnabus from the Book of Acts.  We first meet him in chapter 4.

Acts 4:36   Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus,

So his actual name was Joseph.  Barnabus was a nickname that our translation says means “son of encouragement.”  It is a Hebrew name, Bar-Nabba, meaning “son of a prophet.”  A prophet is not so much someone who foretells, but one who proclaims God’s message. And God’s message is good news; it is encouragement.   And he is from the land of Cyprus. Cyprus is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Turkey and Syria.  It had a thriving Jewish population due to trade, but was primarily composed of Gentiles. Then the next verse tells us:

Acts 4:36-37 “Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.”

We meet Barnabus in Jerusalem; he is the first to sell land and give the proceeds to support the poor among them.  Barnabus was willing to take a financial risk.  He stepped up in faith when there were others in need.  This is just who he was.

Let’s jump ahead in Acts, a few chapters, after the stoning of Stephen, to see more of Barnabus.  The persecution in Jerusalem had caused some followers to spread far, but there was a problem in Antioch.

Acts 11:19-22   Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.

Initially, the message of Jesus, the Messiah, was only shared with other Jews.  But in Antioch, they witnessed to the “Helenists also”, that is, the Greeks, people who were not Jewish.1  Word reaches Jerusalem that non-Jews are following Jesus.  And they didn’t know what to do about that.  Others had always been able to join with them in the Jewish faith, even at the time of the Exodus, but that involved a formal procedure and questioning.  They had to agree to follow Jewish laws regarding the Sabbath, food, and ritual purity.  These apostles had always considered their belief in Jesus as a continuation of their Jewish faith.  What should they do with these Gentiles who wanted to join them?  What should they expect from these Greek followers?  Do they need to go through the age-old process to become a part of the Jewish faith?

Someone needed to go to Antioch to assess the situation and help decide what they should do.  And Barnabus is the obvious choice.  Some of the Jews sharing Jesus with the Greeks were from Cyprus and Cyrene, both places with a large Gentile population.  Barnabus was from Cyprus.  And Barnabus’s experience in dealing with Saul might come in handy.  Luke tells us what happened then:

Acts 11:23-24   When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord.

Barnabus goes to Antioch and, as he did with Saul, sees past the problems and sees the potential of the people there.  Then Barnabus does a really good thing.  Who would be best to help this young group of Jesus followers, with a mixture of Gentiles and Jews?  Saul, of course, trained as a Jewish Rabbi, but was called to preach the gospel of Jesus to the Gentiles.  Acts 11:25-26   So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year, they met with the church and taught a large number of people.

Note that Barnabus stays here for a year with them.  He moves to Antioch for a year to help Saul.  He is a man of commitment.  There is one more scene in the life of Barnabus I’d like us to take a look at.  

In Acts 15, the Jesus followers are still struggling with the same question of what to do with these Gentiles who are accepting Jesus.  Should they make them stop eating pork?  Should they have to follow all the rules of the Rabbis?   They hold a major conference in Jerusalem and reach a compromise decision.  We will talk more about that when we get there.  But then, following this conference, they sent Saul and Barnabus out as missionaries to the Gentiles with this word.

Acts 15:36-38  And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.” Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John, called Mark. But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.  

Saul/Paul wants to revisit all the areas they have been in before to assess them.  Barnabus agreed, but he wanted to take John Mark with them. John Mark was actually a cousin of Barnabas.  Paul disagreed because of an earlier event.  John Mark was on their previous missionary journey, and at one point, Luke tells us:

Acts 13:13   “Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem,”   

Luke doesn’t tell us why John Mark left them and returned home, but apparently, Paul was very unhappy about it.

Acts 15:36-39“And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.” Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John, called Mark. But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other.”

They had a sharp disagreement.   They had words.  Barnabus wanted to give John Mark another chance.  Again, it was his cousin, but this is what Barnabus would do for anyone.  He doesn’t regard John Mark as a deserter, a failure, or a problem.  Again, as with his encounter with Saul, he doesn’t see the problem; he sees the potential.  He looks past the mistake to see the grace.  This is Barnabas’ character.  So look what God does here.

Acts 15:39-41“Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.God takes this disagreement between two preachers and, instead of causing the failure of their mission, increases it twofold.   That is what God always does.  He transforms our failures into multiplied successes.  So we end up with not one but two missionary journeys.

We later find that Barnabas was correct about John Mark.  He went on to do much and authored our Gospel of Mark.  And he and Paul reconciled.  Paul writes in his letter to Timothy:

2 Timothy 4:9-11   Do your best to come to me soon. … Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.”

And again, we have Barnabus to thank for this.  Because he thought young John Mark needed another chance, Barnabus saw that God was not finished with John Mark.  Again, he saw grace, not guilt, potential, not problem. 

But before we close this section, I want to go back to that passage in Acts 15 where Paul and Barnabas have their disagreement.

Acts 15:39 “And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other.

The Greek word we see translated as “sharp disagreement” is “paroxysmos”.   The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says it means: “to spur,” “to stir to anger,” “to be provoked, incensed.”  Provocation is usually seen as a negative thing.  We see the verb form of this word in Ephesians 6:4. 

Ephesians 6:4 “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

But again, the noun form is only in the Bible twice.  First, here, describing the “sharp disagreement” between Paul and Barnabus, and the second time in the book of Hebrews.  The book of Hebrews does not identify its author, but most scholars believe the author was Barnabas.  And here is the other verse with paroxysmos:

Hebrews 10:24-25 “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Let us consider how to paroxysmos one another.  Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good works. This is so something that would come from the pen of our Barnabas, our son of encouragement.  Leave it to him to take a word that is usually negative and make it positive.   You may want to call him an optimist, seeing only the good, but Barnabas had the ability to see all the good from God.  I call that faith.  As he did with other followers, with Paul, and with John Mark, he was always seeking ways to encourage others to reach their potential in Jesus.  He refused to allow someone’s past actions to dictate their future.  He was always ready to see God’s grace and forgiveness in action in the lives of others.  

I don’t know about you, but I think the world needs more Barnabases.  I think we all need to develop the Barnabus within us. When everyone else steps back in fear, we need someone who will step forward in faith. When people view someone as a failure, we need someone who will see them as someone God can use.

Who is today’s Saul?  Who is today’s John Mark?  People need someone to believe in them.  Our young people need someone willing to see their possibilities and provoke them to reach their potential in Christ.  

The world is full of people who have made mistakes and failed in life, who need someone to see beyond their past and help them consider their future.  Shirley and I have seen many who have come through our homeless program or have served jail sentences who just need one person who will believe in them, give them another chance, and stand by them.  We all have our faults.  We all need the gift of grace from God, and we need the gift of grace from each other.  I want us all to pray and ask God to help us be the Barnabas in someone’s life.  

This is what Barnabus would say to us today:

Hebrews 10:24-25 “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Let this be our prayer.  Father, fill us with your Holy Spirit that we may be like Barnabus.  Urge us to consider how we can provoke one another to love and good works.  

  1. The text clearly means non-Jewish people (Gentiles), but this same term is also used in Acts 9.29 to mean Greek-speaking Jews. This is likely a manuscript problem as noted in the Tyndale Commentary: “Luke must mean Gentiles, but the text is uncertain. Instead of ‘Greeks’, the majority of the MSS (including Codex Vaticanus) have ‘Hellenists’, the word used in 6:1 and 9:29 to designate Greek-speaking Jews.”

January 11, 2026 –  The Place of Speaking— Acts #27

David Chupp Acts

January 11, 2026 –  The Place of Speaking— Acts #27
Acts 9:1–30 

We discussed last week how Saul went into the Jewish synagogue to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.  But he didn’t get the response he wanted.  Rather than being convinced, they became confused.  And they started to get agitated.  It wasn’t as easy as Saul thought it would be. Let’s pick up in Acts where we left off with the following two verses:

Acts 9:22  But Saul became more and more capable, and was causing confusion among the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ. 

Acts 9:23 Now, after some days had passed, the Jews plotted together to kill him…

“After some days had passed….”   Now I read that today, and I wonder how many days?  Maybe a week or two?  What you might miss is that Luke, telling the story of the early Jesus followers, skips 3 years here. There are 3 years between Acts 9:22 and 23. Now, if Luke’s purpose in the book were to tell the life story of this man Saul, he would have included material between these 2 verses.   While Saul is an essential figure in Acts, it is not a biography.  So Luke skips that part of Saul’s life.   But we need to understand that these were crucial years for Saul.

 Since people are not responding, as he intended, Saul needs to back up and consider things. And thankfully, Saul tells us what happened in these three years in his letter to the Galatians:

Galatians 1:11-14   For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.

Saul needed some time.  He met Jesus a week ago on the road to Damascus.  He had a call on his life to share Jesus with everyone.  But how could he share what he had just discovered himself?   He had studied these scriptures for so long, and he now realized they led to Jesus, but he needed some time to work through this.  His old framework for understanding scripture needed to be dismantled and rebuilt in the light of Jesus. 

Saul tells us how he came to understand the gospel he was preaching to the Jesus followers in Galatia.  It wasn’t man’s gospel.  Before meeting Jesus on the Damascus Road, Saul had done a lot of preaching of man’s gospel.  He had been trained by the best men, the greatest rabbis. And Saul says, I was the star student.  I absorbed everything they taught me like a sponge.   I was at the top of the class in knowing the gospel of man.  Saul says, I was the expert in the traditions of my fathers.  But that was the wrong gospel.  It was man’s version, not God’s.

He tells the group of Jesus followers in Galatia that the gospel that he taught them, the story of Jesus, was not something some man taught him.  He didn’t sit in a classroom taking notes on Jesus.  He didn’t go to a Bible Study.  He didn’t sit and listen to some preacher tell him about Jesus.  He got it directly from Jesus himself.  He didn’t seek out men in Damascus to teach him.  He didn’t go to Jerusalem, where Jesus’ disciples were, to discuss it with them.  So what did he do? He went away into Arabia.    He said he received this message straight from Jesus.  

Jesus came to Saul on that road with a blinding light and told Saul that he had it all wrong.  Saul was out hunting down these Jesus followers and taking them back to be punished in Jerusalem, and he thought he was fighting for God.  But Jesus said, “You are not fighting for God; you are fighting against God. You are persecuting me.”

Saul gets this wake-up call from Jesus, but let me tell you, that one experience with Jesus is not enough for Saul.  That gospel of man that he had been preaching had to be thrown out, and Saul had to start back from scratch.  He needed to understand the real gospel, and Saul was not about to trust that some man was going to give him the correct answer.  He has already made that mistake once.  No, he wants to learn the truth from the one who is the truth.  No more intermediary.  He has to get the story straight, direct from God himself.  So Saul goes to Arabia.

Arabia in the first century included much of what we call Saudi Arabia today, but it extended west to the Sinai Peninsula and north to the latitude of the Sea of Galilee.  We don’t know where exactly Paul went in Arabia.  He could have gone as far as Mount Sinai here and may have spent time in the city of Petra here, but wherever he went, he would have spent a lot of time in the wilderness, for most of Arabia is a desert wilderness.

Saul has a lot to work through.  He needed to work through his own forgiveness before he could proclaim forgiveness to others.  He was carrying a lot of guilt.  He had voted to have Jesus’ followers stoned. He watched as Stephen was killed for proclaiming Jesus.  He was hunting them down like animals.  He had to come to grips with his own forgiveness.  

He had lived his entire life under Levitical law, with all its requirements and sacrifices, seeking atonement for his sins, yet knowing that there was no offering in the Scriptures for intentional sin.  Under Levitical law, if you sinned purposely, there was no offering that could be given.  You had to depend on grace.  If you thought that the Jews only relied on the law and didn’t understand grace, you need to reread the Old Testament. 

They knew they had no hope outside God’s grace.  Sacrificial offerings were never enough.  Now that Saul has found the truth of Jesus’ offering for sin, Saul wondered, “Could there be atonement for purposeful sins?”  Does Jesus’ sacrifice for us cover even that?  Saul had to work this out and then find forgiveness for his personal campaign of terror against Jesus.  Saul was a man undone.  He needed more revelation from Jesus himself. 

And where do you go when you want to hear directly from God?  Sure, God can speak to us anywhere, but let me ask you, “Where do you go when you want to hear from God?”  If you are familiar with the Bible, like Saul, then you know where to go – you go to the wilderness. The wilderness is where God speaks.

I have mentioned before that Hebrew is a language of few words.  Very commonly, the names of places are not unique, but are derived from the activity that happens at that place. For example, in Hebrew, the verb “to slaughter” or “to sacrifice” is ‘zavach’.  The word for the place where sacrifices happen, the altar, is “mizbeach”—same consonants with the ‘mem’ or our letter ‘m’ as a prefix.    

Another example: the word for “holy” is ‘qodesh’.  You add the mem (m) to the beginning, and you get miqdash, the place that is holy, or sanctuary. And one more: take the Hebrew word for ‘sunset’, ‘arav’.  Again, add the mem and you to the place where sunset happens. ‘ma’a rav’, the Hebrew word for “west”, because that is where the sunset occurs.    The psalmist says God will separate our sins from us as far as the east is from the ma’arav.  (Psalm 103:12)

And I have shown you all that to show you this:  The Hebrew verb “to speak” is ‘dibber.’  Again, add the mem to create the Hebrew word for the place where speaking happens, ‘midbar.’  And ‘midbar’ is the Hebrew word for the wilderness.  So, literally, in the Hebrew Bible, the place where speaking happens is the wilderness. 

And that is odd, because the wilderness is a place of barrenness, emptiness, loneliness.  There is no one there.  This is the place where the language of the Bible says that speaking occurs.  But if there is no one there, who speaks in the wilderness?  I can not overstate the importance of this concept in Scripture.  The wilderness is where God speaks.  Let me give you a few examples.

Moses – Moses entered the wilderness not by choice.  He was adopted to be a prince in Pharaoh’s court but was kicked out of Egypt for murder.   In the Egyptians’ minds, it was a death sentence.  For them, the wilderness was where you went to die.  There was nothing there.   No food, no water. 

Look at this Google Earth view of Egypt.  Notice the thin ribbon of green in a sea of brown.  The green is the fertile land surrounding the Nile, the most fertile land in the world.  But take one step past the waters of the Nile, and you are in the wilderness, where nothing grows, where there is only death.  Aside from the delta, Egypt is a narrow ribbon of green, with the rest desert.  Let me give you another view.

This is from about 200 feet in the air.  Egypt has the richest farmland in the world.  Thousands of years of Nile flooding, bringing rich deposits of silt, have created topsoil layers several feet thick.  This view was from last fall in one of these:

And we floated in a basket out over the ribbon of green that accompanies the Nile.

These particular fields were corn or sorghum.   The fertility of this land is fantastic.  But go up a little higher, and you can see where the green ends.

You can see a sharply demarcated line that divides rich farmland from desert and wilderness.   A place with no water, where nothing grows, a place where you die.  Who would ever leave this lush land and go to this land of death?  To be banished to the wilderness is to be sent to die.  But Moses doesn’t die; he survives and thrives. He spends 40 years in the wilderness, the same wilderness Saul entered.  It was a time of deep introspection that Moses needed.  And after 40 years, when Moses is ready, he encounters God in a burning bush on the mountain, Sinai.

Moses’ time in the wilderness became a season of preparation, where his own past in Egypt and his 40 years of shepherding would serve him as he led Israel through that same wilderness for 40 years. What started as a death sentence —a time of punishment for Moses —became a path to his purpose—a training ground for the mission God had prepared for him.  In the wilderness, God spoke to Moses.

Elijah — Elijah fled to the wilderness after his battle with the prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel.  You know the story.   God sends Elijah to King Ahaz to tell him there will be a drought and famine due to the nation’s worship of the false god, Baal.  God takes care of Elijah during the famine, first by ravens bringing him food and later through a widow whose jar of flour and oil never run out.  Then there is a confrontation between the prophets of Baal and Elijah on Mt Carmel.  Both are to build an altar, and whichever god brings down fire on their altar would be the true god.  So Yehovah brings down the fire, and in judgment, Elijah slaughters the prophets of Baal. 

Then Queen Jezebel is angry at Elijah for killing her prophets and swears to kill him.  Elijah flees to escape Jezebel.   After this great victory, he is depressed.  He feels he is the only prophet of Yehovah left in the world.  He flees to the wilderness, where he just wants to die.  He ends up at Sinai, the same mountain where God spoke to Moses.  And Elijah sits alone in a cave on the mountain.  Loneliness is hard.  But the wilderness of loneliness can be a gift because in those times, God can speak.

And in this lonely wilderness, God speaks to Elijah, telling him he is not alone.  God restores his strength and comforts him. There, you remember, God didn’t appear in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a “still small voice,” revealing Himself not in overwhelming power but in gentle presence, speaking to Elijah, giving him new tasks, and assuring him that he is not alone.  There are 7,000 faithful Israelites who remain.  In the wilderness, God speaks and restores Elijah’s hope. 

And there is David, who flees to the wilderness as a fugitive from King Saul, who hunts him relentlessly.  There are times when David thinks he has come to the wilderness to die.  But there he learns to trust deeply in God to provide for him.  And it is there that David learns to listen to God speak, in the land of speaking.  And there he sings out to God in psalms like this:

Psalm 63:1-4   O God, You are my God;  Earnestly I seek You;
My soul thirsts for You;     My body longs for You
In a dry and weary land    Where there is no water. 
I have seen You in the sanctuary, 
 Beheld Your power and Your glory. 
Because Your love is better than life,   My lips will glorify You. 
I will praise you as long as I live,
And in your name, I will lift up my hands.

David grew closer to God in the trials of the wilderness, the place where God speaks.

And then there is Jesus, who, after his baptism, was “driven to the wilderness” by the Spirit.  He spends 40 days in prayer and fasting to the Father in preparation for his ministry.  But Jesus’ story reminds us that in this land of speaking, there may be more than the voice of God.  For in the wilderness, where there are no other people or distractions, there are two voices one may listen to: our Father God, and the accuser, the satan.  Jesus gains insight and instruction from the Father, but he is also tempted by the accuser.  In the wilderness, there is a voice to heed and a voice to reject.  

So we see that Biblical characters end up in the wilderness for different reasons.   Moses is sent there as a death sentence.  Elijah flees in depression and loneliness.  David flees from an unjust king, and Jesus is driven by the Spirit.  I didn’t mention the first person in the Bible who is seen in the wilderness.

It is Hagar, the slave that the Pharaoh of Egypt gave to Abraham and Sarah; tradition tells us she was a princess in Pharaoh’s court.  But Sarah and Abraham mistreat her sexually, and Hagar bears them a son, and then they kick her out of their home into the wilderness to die.  Twice, Hagar is in the wilderness, but there God sees her and speaks to her. 

And look at this parallel:  400 years after Hagar. Moses, a prince in Pharaoh’s court, is kicked out of his home into the wilderness to die, and there Moses hears God speak to him.  This slave turned prince of Egypt was kicked out to the wilderness to die because he took a life. Again, that was 400 years after Hagar, a princess of Egypt, turned slave, kicked out to the wilderness to die because she brought life into the world.

These two people with exactly opposite circumstances both end up in the wilderness, where they are expected to die, but where God speaks to them. These mirror-image stories illustrate an important point:  No matter your circumstances, find your way to the wilderness, for that is where God speaks.

Where do you go to hear God speak?   Don’t tell me you go to YouTube.  God doesn’t have a channel there.   Don’t tell me you listen to Christian music or watch a church service on TV, or attend a small country church.   Saul would ask you to be very careful listening to the gospel of men.

All of those can be good things. But again, Saul would tell you that you need to hear from God Himself to avoid being off track by listening to the traditions of men.  There are some great Christian books and Christian Music out there.  But some contain some really odd ideas about God.  There are some great teachers and preachers out there, but again, you have to be careful you aren’t just getting Man’s Gospel.  Remember what Paul said:

Acts 17:11  “Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”

If not for Jesus stopping Saul in his tracks on the Damascus Road, Saul would have wasted his whole life.  Saul was giving 100% for God, but he was 100% wrong. That is what he got for following man’s gospel and traditions instead of the real gospel of Jesus.   So Saul went to Arabia, to the wilderness, because he knew that was where God spoke.  And he wasn’t about to be fooled by another person.  So Saul encouraged all his listeners to follow his example and that of these Berean Jews.  Saul said, “Listen eagerly to what I say, but don’t take my word for it.  Never just accept what any man says.  Study the scriptures yourself every day to make sure you are getting it straight from God.”

Do you want to commune with God?  Do you want to hear God speak?  Then find a lonely, quiet place, open his Word, and pray and listen. It may be on a hike in the woods.  It might be in your backyard.  It might be in a quiet room of your house at 4 am. God desperately wants a relationship with you.  He wants that so much that he sent His son to pay the penalty, the debt we owe for our sins.  God wants to speak to you, but he can’t be heard over the noise that we constantly surround ourselves with.  We all need to go to some form of wilderness to hear God speak.  Go with me to the wilderness — God is waiting for you there.

January 6, 2025 –  What Saul Does Next— Acts #26

David Chupp Acts ,

December 3, 2025 –  What Saul Does Next— Acts #26
Acts 9:1–30 

Saul had his experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus.  He continued into Damascus, where, after 3 days, God sent Ananias so that Saul could regain his vision and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  So what does Saul do next?

Acts 9:19-22   For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus. And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” And all who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?” But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

Saul wasted no time in spreading the message of Jesus.  He “immediately” talked about Jesus in the Jewish synagogues, making it clear that He was not just some great teacher, but he was the Messiah that they had prayed for, the Son of God.  And how did the synagogue’s congregation respond? 

“All who heard him were amazed.”  Remember, as you read your Bible, to slow down.  If you really want to understand what is going on, you have to look at the story from the point of view of all the characters.  Saul comes walking into this synagogue.  Some of the Jews there (likely a minority) believe that Jesus is the Messiah.  Some do not.  Yet they have been meeting together without problems.  They all continued to see themselves as Jews and did not see this difference of opinion as incompatible with worshipping the same God. 

In Jesus’ day, different Jewish sects worshipped together and had been doing so for years.  For example, the Pharisees and Sadducees had very different theological ideas.  The Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife, but the Pharisees did.  The Sadducees believed only the first 5 books of the Bible, while the Pharisees included the rest of what we call the Old Testament as their authoritative scripture. 

They had what we would call significant differences, but they worshipped the same God, and they worshipped together.   Can you imagine that?   Now, we feel like we can’t worship with someone who immerses if we sprinkle or vice versa.  “Oh, they believe in eternal security; we can’t worship there.”  Or “They sing with guitars” or “they sing with those ancient hymn books”.  Or they get out too late, or you name it.  We tend to find numerous reasons why we can’t worship with other Jesus followers.  

It wasn’t such a big deal in Jesus and Saul’s day, and even into the early centuries of Christianity.  But now we have several hundred main denominations, and some say there are 45,000 total denominations.  I think that number is a bit high, but there are indeed too many.   This number multiplied greatly after the Protestant Reformation due to differing interpretations of Scripture. 

There is an old story of a man stranded alone on a deserted island. After many years, a ship sails close by the island, and the man is rescued. The ship’s captain comes ashore, notices the three huts that the man built, and asks, “Tell me about these huts.” The man replies, “The first hut is my home, and the second hut is my church.” The captain asks, “What is the third hut?” The man replies, “Oh, that is where I used to go to church before I got mad.”

Timothy Tennent, who served for 15 years as president of Asbury Theological Seminary and is now on the faculty of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, says we should see God’s church not as a business but as a family, with Jesus as its head.  As with any family, it can be a group that exhibits both diversity and unity.  We all have differences, but we are united because we are family. And we should come together to focus on Jesus, what we have in common.  Tennent says, “We must learn to think of ourselves as members of a massive global Christian movement that is looking more and more like John’s vision in Revelation 7:9, which encompasses people from every nation, tribe, people, and language.” 1

Despite their differences, the Jews in the first century were united in their belief in the one true God and in worship at the one temple. There was only one place in the world where sacrifices could be made on an altar.  There was one place that they were commanded to travel to for the festivals. That single location helped to unite them, for there was nowhere else in the world to worship as they were commanded.  Now we have churches on every corner.  We no longer have unity in a location, and it seems as if we have forgotten our unity in the one true God.  We sacrifice our unity in Jesus for petty beliefs or, sometimes even worse, for traditions.  We forget that there is still only one temple.

Only one temple?   Let’s take a deeper look at that.  One problem with our English translations is that the word ‘you’ can be used either singularly or in plural.  For example, you are sitting in a room with fellow workers when your boss comes in and says, “I need you to finish this report by 5 PM.”  He walks out, and your co-worker across the table gets up to leave and says to you, “Well, David, you better get on it then.”  But  you say, “Hey, he meant for all of us to work on the report.”  Did he mean you singular or you plural?  There is a difference.  Take the following verse:

1 Corinthians 6:19   Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?”

Is Saul talking to one person or to a group of people?  Now, if these are singular ‘you’s’ then Saul is saying that each individual is God’s Temple and God’s Spirit dwells in each one of us individually.  Fortunately, unlike English, in both Greek and Hebrew, there are different words for the singular and plural forms of ‘you’, so we know they are all plural here.  So it should read this way:

1 Corinthians 3:16   Do you all not know that all of you together are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you all?

We all together are God’s temple.  God dwells in us collectively as a community of believers and as the universal church. (I need to add that there is a verse where Saul talks about God’s spirit dwelling on individual believers, but his main emphasis is about the spirit dwelling on us as a community.) God dwells with us as a church just as he chose to dwell among the children of Israel on their journey to the promised land.  Remember, he told Moses:

Exodus 25:8   And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.”

This has been God’s goal since Adam and Eve sinned and put a wall of separation between them and God, and were put out of the Garden.  God desires to live with us, to tabernacle with us.  John tells us that:

John 1:14   And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…

Jesus came to dwell among us for a time.  And since Jesus removed the wall of sin that separated us from God, we can now, together, be the temple where God dwells.  He dwells with us now through His Holy Spirit and will one day make that complete when there is no more separation, no more sin, no more death.  Or as Saul writes:

1 Thessalonians 4:17   Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Saul again, in his letter to the Ephesians, talks even more clearly about how we, together, are God’s temple:

Ephesians 2:19-22   So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

All of us are joined together on the cornerstone of Jesus to be the one holy temple, the one dwelling place for God by the Spirit.   We, together as the followers of Jesus, are God’s dwelling place.   We need to be united in this one temple just as the Jews in Saul’s day were united in one temple.  For the world we live in is changing, and you can probably see that it will become increasingly challenging to be a Jesus follower. 

The percentage of believers is dropping rapidly in the US, even in the Bible Belt.  In many areas of the country, it is already unpopular to be a follower of Jesus.  We need to band together as a family with Jesus as our head.  There is one God, and there is one Church.  We have to learn to work together in partnership with other churches in our community, because we are all on the same team.

And in this synagogue in Damascus, Jews who follow Jesus and those who do not continue to meet together.  Then Saul walks in.  And everyone there knew why he was there.  He is there bringing letters from the council in Jerusalem to have these Jesus followers arrested.  He has come to arrest and carry back to Jerusalem some of the members of their congregation.  But he doesn’t arrest anyone.  In fact, he starts talking about how this Jesus is the “Son of God.”

It is just the opposite of the message they expected to hear.  So they were ‘amazed.’  Other translations say ‘astonished’ or ‘astounded.’ They are shocked and confused.  You could have knocked them over with a feather.  This expert in their religion comes with the authority of the religious leaders, but he starts speaking the message that they said was blasphemy.   Saul is speaking the exact words for which they thought he came to arrest people for saying.  What happened?

Saul’s entire way of understanding scripture has flipped upside down in the past week.  He had studied the Scriptures his whole life and memorized them.  He was sure of what they meant.  He would have bet his life on it.  Remember that Saul was there when Stephen was stoned.  Remember that Stephen gave a long review of the scriptures before he was killed.  Saul had heard Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7 explaining how the scriptures show the rejection of God’s prophets leads to the rejection of Jesus.  

Saul was there and heard it all. But it did not affect him, for he had already decided Stephen was a blasphemer.  He shuts his ears to the story of God dealing with Abraham and all of their forefathers that Stephen had used to explain God’s purpose and their rejection of God’s plan.  Don’t you know that the words of Stephen rang in Saul’s ears after he encountered Jesus, for Saul had rejected Stephen just as his peers had denied Jesus, and his forefathers had rejected the prophets before them.

Stephen and Saul studied the same scripture, the same history, but came to different conclusions.  Saul did not lack education; he lacked perspective.  And what made the difference in Saul’s upside-down interpretation of the Scriptures?  He met Jesus.  And then he considered the scriptures with the knowledge of Jesus.  And he saw the truth of the scriptures he had missed all his life.  He had the best education, he trained under the best, but he had misunderstood.  If you ignore the idea of a Messiah when you read the Scriptures, you can not possibly understand.

And now here is that same Saul who had voted to have Stephen stoned for blasphemy, using that same scripture and the same explanation Stephen used.  Can you imagine their confusion?  Luke tells us they were “confounded.”   Let’s do a word study.  For those of you who like word studies, this will be great. If you don’t, then just bear with me for a few minutes.

Acts 9:22   But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

The Greek word translated as “confounded”  is ‘syncheō’, derived from two Greek words: “syn”, which means ‘together’, and ‘cheō’, which means ‘to pour.’  Literally, it means “to pour together.”  This is the Greek word that the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was around in Jesus and Saul’s day, uses for the Hebrew ‘balal’, which means ‘to mix’, as in grain sacrifices, where flour is mixed with oil.  

Exodus 29:40   And with the first lamb a tenth measure of fine flour mingled with a fourth of a hin of beaten oil, and a fourth of a hin of wine for a drink offering.

It is the idea of taking something simple and pure, and pouring or mixing something into it, and it is now different.  We have a very similar word in English.  Confusion, which comes from the Latin confundere, which also means “to pour together, mix, mingle, disorder.”  And now you can see how we moved from there in English to our phrase “mixed up” for confusion, and then even further to “agitated” or “stirred up.”

The first time we see the word ‘balal’ (‘syncheō’ in Greek) in the Bible is in Genesis 11.

Genesis 11:7   Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.

‘Confuse’ is our Greek word ‘syncheo’.  What God did at Babel was to take their single, simple language and mix it with other languages, as one would add oil to flour when making a cake.  And by making this mixture, the people are confused.  That is the idea behind the word.

We also see the Greek syncheō in the mirror of this Babel story that we have covered in Acts 2.  There, at Pentecost, God reversed the act at Babel.  There, he removed the language differences so that everyone could understand.

Acts 2:6  And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

But this sudden ability to understand all these foreign languages leaves the people syncheo (bewildered), literally mixed up, for the world as they knew it suddenly changed.   What they thought was impossible just happened to them.  And this is the same word translated as ‘confounded’ in our passage today:

Acts 9:22   But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

So when Saul comes in, they are expecting him to carry off these Jesus followers in chains, but he comes in and says he is a Jesus follower and tries to convince them they should be also.  It is no wonder they are “mixed up.”  Well, people don’t like to be ‘confused,’ so if it is unresolved, they move from mixed up to a more intense state, stirred up or agitated. And this crowd in Damascus will get so agitated that it reaches the point of violence, but we will talk about that later.

And the verse says, “Saul increased all the more in strength.”  What does that mean?  Saul is not going to the gym or working out with weights.  I think the NET Bible translates this well as it says, “But Saul became more and more capable…”.

Over time, Saul grew better at presenting the scriptures as they pointed to Jesus.  But he quickly discovered that it wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought.  The people are just mixed up and becoming stirred up.  This was not what he wanted.  So Saul is about to change strategies.  

He can’t stay in Damascus, as things aren’t going well for him there. He is not leading people to understand how the scriptures point to Jesus, but he is leading them into confusion.   He sure can’t return to Jerusalem, where they are punishing the followers of Jesus.  So he goes where every prophet goes to get instruction from God. He goes to the wilderness, to Arabia.  Next week, we will talk about Saul spending the next three years in Arabia.

But let me review the two points I want you to take home from today’s passage.

  1.   The community of Jesus followers joins together to be the place where God dwells.  We are where the Spirit dwells in our community and are responsible for being that light where we live.  And the universal church is God’s Temple in our world, the city on the hill where the light of Jesus will spread to the world.  We worship one God, and we are one Temple.  We should act that way.  We have to learn to get along and work together.
  2. (And this is the big one.)  To understand the Bible, you must grasp its big picture and see how it all leads to Jesus.   Saul and Stephen read the same scriptures but came to different conclusions until Saul had a dramatic event that changed his perspective and enabled him to interpret the Scriptures correctly.  That event was coming face-to-face with Jesus.  Without Jesus, we can not correctly understand God’s Word.

This is why it is so essential to understand the big picture of what God is doing in the story of the Bible.  Can you imagine taking one piece of a 1000-piece puzzle, studying it, and trying to understand which piece it represents if you aren’t able to see the big picture the puzzle forms?  But that is precisely what we are doing when we study a small piece of the Bible without knowing the big picture.

You should be able to tell someone the story of the Bible in less than two minutes. The Bible is a big book, and many people find it hard to understand.  But the basic story is not complicated.   God created the universe we live in. And he made people. He made this world a place where we can live with him.  But Adam and Eve decided they didn’t want to live by God’s rules for the world he built.  So they rebelled, we call that sin. 

And since they didn’t want to live by God’s rules, they had to leave.  That is the first three chapters of Genesis.  The rest of the Bible is the story of God designing a way to reunite Himself with His people, because He wanted to dwell with them.  So he tried to give them instructions for how to live, but they continued to rebel.  The only way we could learn to be obedient was for God to place his own Spirit upon us.  But our guilt and sin were in the way.  Someone had to pay the price of the penalty for this sinful rebellion.

And only a man who had never rebelled could pay the price.  But none could be found.  All people sinned and fell short.  So God sent His son to be the one human who would not rebel or sin.  And He would pay the price for all of our rebellion.  And so Jesus came and demonstrated a life of following God, and then he died on a cross as payment for our sins.  And as proof of God’s acceptance of this sacrifice, God raised him from the dead. 

And if we accept that payment, and agree to follow Jesus’ instructions and His way of living, then our debt is paid, and the wall that separated us from God is removed, and now God’s spirit can dwell with us, and He will empower us to live that life we couldn’t before.  And the final part of God’s plan is to one day remove all sin, and all of the consequences of sin, all the pain and death.  And then we will dwell with God forever, just as He designed it in the beginning.

That is the story of the Bible in less than 2 minutes.  That is the story of this entire universe.  That is what the rabbi Saul didn’t understand.  Though he had studied the scriptures all his life, he missed the main point…. he missed Jesus because he didn’t see the big picture of the Bible.  But then one day, he met Jesus, and the light bulb came on for him.  Suddenly, he began to understand the story of the Bible. 

So many people say they don’t understand the Bible.  And I agree, sometimes it is hard.  We are reading a book that is thousands of years old, speaking of vastly different cultures and times.  It takes a little work to read ancient literature and understand what they were thinking and doing.  But I am a firm believer that God rewards people who take the time to read His book.

I believe that God gives insight to those who earnestly seek and ask.  But it is meant to be read in community.  That is why we gather together to study.  That is why many of us are reading 3-4 chapters daily and discussing them.  We are all pilgrims on a path to God.  Let us all walk together.

  1. Tennent, Timothy. Theology in the Context of World Christianity. 2007.

December 30, 2025 –  Looking Back to Move Ahead—

David Chupp Uncategorized , , , , ,

December 30, 2025 –  Looking Back to Move Ahead—
A New Year’s Eve Message

A family anticipates the birth of a child.  High School and College Students anticipate graduation.  A patient anticipates test results. Just last week, children around the world had trouble sleeping due to the anticipation of Christmas morning.  And in just a few days, 1 million people will gather in Times Square, New York, in anticipation of a lighted ball sliding down a pole.1

Anticipation carries excitement—but also tension—joy—but also uncertainty.  And Scripture tells us plainly: God’s people are an anticipating people.  From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is not a story of instant fulfillment.  It is the story of men and women who lived in the space between promise and completion, between the now and the not yet —trusting that God would finish what He had begun.  Anticipation is closely tied to hope.  And Hope is the subject of our first week of Advent.   But the Bible does not use the word ‘hope’ the same way we do.

When we use the word “hope,” sometimes we mean“wishful thinking.”  “I hope my team wins the game.”  “I hope I win the lottery.”  And in these instances, this hope may be a reasonable expectation or not.  One of my grandchildren said last week, “I hope it snows for Christmas.”  She can wish, but living in Northwest Georgia, it’s unlikely to happen.  A farmer plants seeds in the spring and optimistically hopes for a good crop.   My friend can say he hopes Georgia wins the playoff game this weekend.  And based on their record and recent performance, it is certainly much more likely to happen than for Kate to see her snow.  But there is a difference in the way the Bible uses the word.  Biblical hope is not wishful thinking or optimistic thinking. Biblical hope is a confidence that something will happen.  It is not a likelihood, but a sure thing, because it is rooted in the character of God.

The primary Hebrew word translated as “hope” in the Bible is qavah.  This word has a fascinating history.  It is a verb derived from the noun ‘qav’.  A qav is a measuring string.  Today, any craftsman carries a measuring tape, but in Old Testament times and in Jesus’ day, they used a string called a qav.   In Isaiah 44, the prophet is speaking about someone making an idol of wood, and he says, 

Isaiah 44:13   The carpenter stretches a qav; he marks it out with a pencil.

We see this used still today.  If you sew, you may have used a measuring tape.  In Biblical Hebrew, this is a qav.  And the ancient Hebrews made a verb ‘qavah’ out of this noun.  But how do you get hope from a measuring string?   Think about this qav. It won’t give an accurate measurement if it is not stretched out.  The carpenter stretches out the string to measure. The seamstress stretches out the measuring tape.  It must be under tension to be effective.  

So the noun, qav, is a string stretched to tension to measure, and the verb they made out of it, ‘qavah’, is all about the tension produced in the process of waiting in hope.  Hope in the Hebrew sense is all about that tension.  Hope is living in the tension that exists between what is promised and the completion of that promise, between the now and the not yet.  The tension of the time when you know something will happen, and when it does happen.  

Abraham was promised a son, but there was that time of tension when all he had was the promise, and he wondered if he would ever have a son.  Israel was promised a Messiah, but it had to wait over 400 years.  We are promised the return of Jesus, and we live today in the tension of knowing that promise, even as 2000 years have passed and it has not yet been fulfilled.  Again, our hope is not in something that might come true; it is a surety, for God’s promises always come true.

This is the essence of faith, holding onto the promises of God in the time between.  Hope is the tension. Faith is not letting go.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.”

The scripture says faith is the evidence of things that haven’t happened yet.  But if you are the prosecuting attorney, how do you provide evidence of something that is yet to happen?  Faith in God’s trustworthiness, faith in God’s promises, that is the proof of what will happen.  God is always faithful to his promises; He is infallible.  And that is all the evidence we need.  

And it is not ‘blind faith.’  It is not as if our faith in God is just a mental decision to believe something we can’t see.  We don’t just choose to have faith.   Faith is itself evidence-based.  This is the field of apologetics, which covers the evidence for the Bible and Jesus.  If you are interested, I can recommend several good books on this subject.  But the evidence before us is the Bible.  These people who lived and experienced God in their lives present to us the evidence of thousands of years of God’s promises being fulfilled.  The proof is all through this book. And Biblical history is increasingly confirmed each year. 

For years, many historians doubted some of the Bible’s stories, saying that, since they had found no historical proof, they must not be true.  They questioned the existence of a King of Israel named David.  That was completely laid to rest when mention of David was found on a 9th-century stone tablet in 1993.  Historians all agreed that the Hittite empire, often mentioned in the Bible, never existed, as there was no archaeological evidence.  But they had to walk this back and change their books when they found the remains of their large capital city in Turkey.   More and more evidence comes every year.  You can visit museums to see many artifacts that confirm the Bible narrative.  

But we don’t need all of those proofs.   What does Jesus tell Thomas after he shows Thomas his hands and feet? 

John 20:29   “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

“To not see and yet to believe.”  I don’t have to see Jesus’ scars on his hands and feet.  God doesn’t have to perform some sign for me to believe, for he has already done that over and over in the past, in the lives of so many in the Bible and in my life. “To not see and yet to believe” is to live in the tension of that hope in God’s promises that have not come to completion yet, but still believing, not because you can see, but because you have seen enough in the past to know that God is trustworthy.  What you have seen in the past is the basis for your faith.  Where does Paul say faith comes from?

Romans 10:17   So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Paul says, “Faith comes by hearing.”  But remember, Paul is a Jewish Rabbi.  When Paul says ‘hearing’, he has in mind the Hebrew word for hearing, “shema”, which we talked about a few weeks ago.  Shema means hearing and obeying; they cannot be separated.  So Paul is really saying…

Romans 10:17   So then faith cometh by listening and obeying, and this by hearing the word of God.

And Paul is living in a day when God’s message was still primarily transmitted orally.  Very few people had the opportunity to read scripture.  Their primary encounter with God’s word was the spoken word. Now we live in a day when the scriptures are readily available to most people worldwide.  Sadly, some people still only hear the word once a week, even though they have the luxury of reading it every day. God has given us the great gift of his abundant word in many ways. So if Paul were writing this letter today, he might say,

Romans 10:17   So then faith cometh by reading and obeying, and this by reading the word of God.

Here I am talking about the past when everyone else is thinking about the new year approaching.  Are you looking ahead to what this new year will bring?  Many of you will make New Year’s resolutions.  And most who do will quickly break them. I read that fewer than 8% of New Year’s resolutions are kept.  But we like to set goals.  We are told to ask ourselves, “Where would you like to be in 5 years?  How much weight do you want to lose in the coming year?  How much money do you want to put in a savings account by the end of the year?”  We make goals looking to the future.  We are very future-oriented.

It comes from our view of time that we learned from the ancient Greeks.  The Greeks saw time as a river.  People stand somewhere along the bank, and where they stand is the present.  What has already happened is downstream in the past behind you.  The future is upstream, yet to pass by us, but it is already there, headed our way.  If you have this view of time, you will be very confused when you read the Bible, because this is not the way the authors of the Bible thought about time.  Take this verse in Job.

Job 19:25   For I know that my Redeemer lives,  And at the last, he will stand upon the earth.

A great verse.  A very poetic way of saying, “I know the living God who will redeem me.  And in the future, he will come back for me.” But the Hebrew word for the future, the last days, is “אַחֲרוֹן” (acharon), which means “what is behind you.”  For Hebrew thinkers, the future is behind you, which is the opposite of how we think: that the future is ahead of us.

The best way I have seen this explained is by a 20th-century German theologian, H. W. Wolff. Wolff says that the Hebrew concept of time is like a man rowing a boat.2  How many of you have ever rowed a rowboat?  In a conventional rowboat, you sit facing the rear of the boat.   And this is the direction you move.   You can see where you have been, but you can’t see where you are going. So in the Hebrew view of time, you have a full view of the past, but you can’t see the future, for it is all ‘acharon’ behind you.

So how do you maintain a steady course in a rowboat if you can’t see where you are going?  I was taught that you focus on a point straight to the rear of the boat.  As long as you keep that point directly behind the boat, you will travel in a straight line.  So in the Hebrew worldview, you focus on a point in the past to direct your course into the future.

There is much truth here.  We can not see into the future.  We can only see the past.  Perhaps this is why so many New Year’s resolutions fail.  We cannot see what lies ahead, but we plan to reach this goal in an unknown future. We set goals where we can’t see.  They become just wishful thinking.  Perhaps we would do better if we operated using God’s view of time.  

We can see the past.  We have records of the past.  We can see how we have behaved and how God acts. Instead of making goals based on an unknown future, we should, like the man in the rowboat, focus on a point in the past and use that to guide us. Find a worthy example in your Bible or in your own life and set that as your goal for the day.

God has given us many instructions on how to act, and he has, in scripture, given us many examples of men acting correctly and incorrectly, along with the consequences of each.  If we look back to God and focus on Him, we can set a course that leads us to where He wants us to be.

Do you see the significant difference between this Hebrew view of time and the Greek view?  In the Greek view, you are on the banks of the river.  You really have no impact on the river itself.  You are just an observer. Things happen and pass you by, and the future is fixed and coming downstream towards you.  But in the Hebrew view, you are in the water.   Like life, you can see the past but not the future.  And you are not just a passive observer; you are active.  You affect your path.  You choose your direction.

Now, let’s tie this back into hope.  Unfortunately, our English Bible translations often render the Biblical word for hope as ‘wait’ instead, as in this verse in Psalm 27.

Psalms 27:14   Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!

That word ‘wait’ is “qavah,” our word for hope.   And if we translate it as ‘wait for the Lord,’ we get the idea that we sit or stand passively, waiting.  But if that is the case, then why do we need to be strong and take courage?  God is expecting us not just to stand there and wait, but to be active, doing something.

So it is not wait’ but ‘hope’.  And that preposition ‘for’ is the Hebrew ‘el’, which does not mean ‘for’ or ‘in’, but means ‘towards.’  But the translators said that “Hope towards the Lord” or “Wait towards the Lord” is not proper English.  So they made it “wait in the Lord,” “wait for the Lord,” or “wait on the Lord.”  Again, stand there and do nothing while God does everything.

That’s nice, but it is not the correct translation of “el,” and it is not how God typically works. Only a few remarkable times does God instruct people to do nothing while he works (before he parted the sea for the children of Israel to walk through is one of the few exceptions). But God calls people to act.  Abraham, go.  Moses, hold up your staff.  Gideon go into battle.  God wants to partner with us. So I would understand that verse this way:

Psalms 27:14   Hope towards Yehovah; be strong, and let your heart take courage; hope towards Yehovah!

Let’s look at a similar verse:

Psalms 37:34  Wait for the LORD and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land;

Here we see the same beginning, which I would translate as “hope towards Yehovah.” And the psalmist says, ” Don’t just stand there, but keep his way, follow his path, do as he commands.  Hope is a proclamation of our faith in Him that causes us to draw near to Him in obedience. And how does God respond when we hope towards Him?  One more verse in Psalms:

Psalm 40:1   I waited patiently for the LORD; He inclined to me and heard my cry.

“Waited patiently” is a translation of the Hebrew ‘qavah qavahti’, literally “I hope hoped.”  The repetition is for emphasis, so you could say, “I hoped hopefully.”  And how does God respond to our hope?   Remember the qav, the measuring line that must be stretched out to work?  And remember how qavah, the word for hope, is like that stretched-out line?  If we hope towards God, if we are willing to live in faith in the tension of his promises, then God will stretch out towards us.  (“Incline” is from the Hebrew ‘natah’, which is a verb that means “to stretch out, spread out, extend, incline, bend,” We see this in Jesus’ most famous parable, the Prodigal Son.  Do you remember when the wayward son finally came to his senses and decided to go home? 

Luke 15:20 And he arose and came to his father.

And how did his father, who is symbolic of God, respond? 

Luke 15:20  But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

When the child walks in the direction of the father, the father runs in the direction of the son.  This is what God does.  If we can hope towards God, being faithful in obedience to Him, stretching out towards him, then He will stretch out to us.   Skip Moen says, “God never tires of our desire to come to Him. More often than not, we stop moving toward Him. We become believers in the divine rather than pilgrims to the divine.”2

Do you want to experience hope to the Lord?   Are you tired of making New Year’s resolutions that you will soon break?  Then choose the Biblical method.  Don’t make a goal for yourself in the future that you cannot see.   Instead, look to the word of God that you can see.   See how he acts in the past and how he wants us to act.  Let that be the fixed point we focus on.  Choose to follow that path.  This is how the author of Hebrews said this:

Hebrews 12:1-2   And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

Jesus is your fixed point to focus on that you use to set your course.  Look to the example of Jesus to guide your behavior.  “Do this in remembrance of me” is not just about partaking in communion or the Lord’s Supper.   Everything we do should be because we are remembering what Jesus did.

And don’t look at a year ahead.  The only day that we can be obedient is today.  Did he say, “Give us this year our yearly bread”?   His mercies are new every morning.  Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily.”

So do you want to lean into God this year and live in an active hope in the tension of his promises?   Then I ask you to join me.  I will be reading through the Bible, looking back to move forward.  And I am not asking you to commit to reading through the Bible in a year.  I am asking you to read through a portion on January 1.  And on January 2, I ask you to consider reading through a portion that day.  One day at a time.  And if you miss a day, it is past; you can’t go back and live it again.  But you pick up the next day in your obedience. If you are interested, let me know, and I’ll put you on the daily text stream.

Romans 15:13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

  1. January 1 was chosen by the Romans as the beginning of the new year in the calendar popularized by Julias Ceasar (the Julian Calendar), as that was the day the Roman Consuls began their year to align with new leadership and the lunar cycle closest to the solstice. January became the name of the month after the two-faced Roman god, Janus, who looks backward to the past and forward to the future.  A correction to this calendar in 1582 became the calendar we use today, as instituted by Pope Gregory XIII.  The change caused the day following October 4, 1582, to be October 15th, not the fifth.  Of course, God had long ago established his own calendar in Exodus 12, with the month of Aviv in the spring as the first month, and the 10th of that month as the day the Passover lamb was killed.  There is no subsequent passage in the Bible that commands altering the calendar God established. 
  2. Wolff, Hans Walter (1974) “The Concept of Time in the Old Testament,” Concordia Theological Monthly: Vol.45, Article 6.
  3. Moen, Skip. From “The Details” Skipmoen.com August 16, 2009.

December 17, 2025 –  Unlikely Choices and Impossible Tasks— Acts #25

David Chupp Acts , , ,

December 17, 2025 –  Unlikely Choices and Impossible Tasks— Acts #25
Acts 9:10-19

Before we continue in Acts, I want to talk about the timeline.  (You will not find universal agreement on the actual dates, but it is the division of time I want you to see here.)   The Gospels begin with the story of John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ birth around 4 BC and end with his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension in 28 AD, covering 31-32 years.  But other than the birth narrative and the visit to the temple at 12 years old, everything else in the Gospels happens in this 1 1/2 year or 70-week period.  When we covered the ministry of Jesus, we went pretty much week by week, following him through the Gospels in real time.

The Timeline for Acts is also around 30-35 years, but the action is not concentrated at a single point.  Acts begins with the Ascension of Jesus and Pentecost, which would have been in June of 28 AD. So we have covered the first 8.5 chapters of Acts in the past 6 months, but that encompasses 2-3 years.  By the 9th chapter of Acts, it is now 2-3 years since Jesus’s crucifixion, resurrection, and the events of Pentecost.  The church has grown in numbers, and persecution has begun.  The rest of Acts covers the 3 years Paul spent in Arabia and his three missionary journeys.

Again, today, in Acts 9, we are at the red arrow above.  Saul met Jesus near Damascus and had been in the city for 3 days.

Acts 9:10-19   Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. Yehovah said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” And Yehovah said to him, “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.” But Yehovah said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, Yehovah Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized; and taking food, he was strengthened.

“Now there was a disciple named Ananias.” (Acts 9:10)   Where did this disciple come from?  Saul is on his way to Damascus to find the followers of Jesus who escaped from Jerusalem.  But Ananias is not one of this group, for in his conversation with Jesus, he says this:

Acts 9:13   But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem.

He may be a new follower of Jesus through the gospel spread by these escapees from Jerusalem, but it is more likely he has been a follower of Jesus in Damascus for some time.   Saul says in his personal account of the story in Acts 22:

Acts 22:12   And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there…

Notice that Ananias is considered a devout man by all the Jews in Damascus.  And we have already seen that he was a disciple of Jesus.  Don’t miss that followers of Jesus can worship alongside Jews in the synagogue.  And these Jews consider the Christians devout, because the Christians are keeping the law.  Again, these followers were not changing religions when they went from the Judaism they grew up in to a belief that their Jewish Messiah had come in Jesus. 

So somehow, Ananias became a follower of Jesus some time ago.  But Jesus never went to Damascus.  Damascus is a long way from anywhere Jesus went.  The closest Jesus came was Caesarea Philippi (about 40 miles away), and there was no public ministry by Jesus there that we have recorded.  

But the message spread through people whose names have never been recorded.  Someone shared the gospel of Jesus with Ananias, and now God has chosen him to correct Saul’s vision problem.  We are not told he is a leader in the church.  He has no title.  He is just an ordinary guy worshiping with all the Jews in the synagogue every Sabbath.  And they all speak well of him.  He is a man of character, well respected by all. 

God calls this ordinary man, Ananias, to do a task.   Go to Judas’ house on Straight Street to see a man for me.  The “street called straight” would be the major east-west street in the center of the city, called the decumanus maximus.  (The major North-South street is called the cardo.) You can see this street in the old town of Damascus today.  But in Ananias’ day, it would have looked more like this colonaded Roman decumanus (Straight Street) in Jerash, Jordan.

In Saul’s day, there would have been houses and shops all along these streets.  So God tells Ananias to go to the home of Judas to see a man named Saul, who has been praying, and who God had shown in a vision that you are coming.  God has really set the table for Ananias.  Have you had a witnessing experience like this: God performed a miracle to get someone’s attention, told you that you personally were coming to help them, and then told you exactly where to go?  I wonder if it wouldn’t happen more if we made a practice of listening for God’s voice.  

But this is no ordinary person that Ananias is being sent to.  Imagine Ananias’ surprise: “His name is Saul?   Saul from Tarsus?    Wait a minute!   You mean the guy who put all the Jesus followers in prison in Jerusalem, the guy who chased some of them all the way up here to tie them up and take them back there to be beaten or worse?    And you want me to go see him?” Well, to cut to the end, Ananias does go; he lays hands on Saul, and his blindness is healed, and Saul is given his call to be a minister.

Two things I want us to see in this story.  First, that God uses ordinary people like Ananias to do his work. Secondly, that God works through very unexpected ways, seeing the potential in people that we often do not see.  And I want to illustrate that by comparing this story in Acts to a very similar story in 1 Samuel. So let’s take a look at 1 Samuel 16:1-13.  Remember 2 weeks ago when we talked about King Saul?  He disobeyed God so often that God fired him as king.  So God tells Samuel to anoint someone else to be king.

1 Samuel 16:1-13   Yehovah said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel?  Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” And Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me.” And Yehovah said, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to Yehovah.’ And invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do. And you shall anoint for me him whom I declare to you.

Samuel did what Yehovah commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling and said, “Do you come peaceably?” And he said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to Yehovah. Consecrate yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely Yehovah’s anointed is before him.” But Yehovah said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For Yehovah sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but Yehovah looks on the heart.” Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, “Neither has Yehovah chosen this one.” Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has Yehovah chosen this one.” And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, “Yehovah has not chosen these.”

Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here.” And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And Yehovah said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of Yehovah rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.

In both stories, God chooses one of his followers to anoint someone who will become a great leader.  He chose the prophet Samuel to anoint David and an ordinary man, Ananias, to anoint Saul.  Notice that both of these choices for future leaders are people who would not have been chosen by popular vote at the time.  David was the youngest son of an unremarkable family in a tiny town.  He had no political experience, no political connections, and no political aspirations.  His family was not wealthy.  Anyone alive then would tell you there was no good reason to choose this shepherd boy as king.  Yet he was God’s choice.  David had the one requirement God seeks – obedience. 

Because anything else, God can provide.  You don’t have the wealth?  God can take care of that.  You have no experience?  God has already supplied you in ways you don’t even realize, and he will continue to give you what you need.  You don’t have the right connections?  God knows everyone you need to know.  Rest assured that the creator and sustainer of this universe is quite capable of supplying all your needs.

Philippians 4:19 “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

But as we discussed several weeks ago, there is one thing God can not supply — your obedience.  God’s plan for our lives will fail if we are not obedient.  Notice I said his plan for your life will fail if you fail him.  But God will see to it that His plan is carried out.  He will give you another chance, or he will find someone else who is willing to work with him.   

Over and over in the Bible, God chooses people to do a task for which they are not fully equipped.   David does not have the prerequisites to become a king.  At the burning bush, Moses gives God all the reasons he is a poor choice.  Moses provides all his excuses, and God answers him, “I will be with you, and I will empower you.”  None of the young men Jesus chose to be disciples would have been selected by any other rabbi of the day.   Poor untrained fishermen, rash impetuous Peter, a tax collector hated by everyone, a zealot?

As with Ananias, God isn’t looking for anyone exceptional.  He doesn’t choose the wisest or the richest or the smartest.   And Saul of Tarsus … he was the one in charge of hunting down and punishing any followers of Jesus.  If you were choosing someone to be the greatest missionary of the first century and the writer of 1/4 of the New Testament, he would have been the unanimous last choice.  What do we learn from this?  Don’t judge people as you see them.  What did God tell Samuel when Samuel thought he had found the best choice for king among Jesse’s boys? 

1 Samuel 16:7   Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For Yehovah sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but Yehovah looks on the heart.

We have to learn not to trust our own perception of people, because we tend to see only the surface, while God looks at the heart.  In the same way, we are not to trust our own judgment of right and wrong, because our vision is limited.

The first sin in the Bible was when Adam and Eve decided that the fruit looked okay to them.   They said, “I don’t see anything wrong with this fruit.”  But the sin was that they were not to decide what is right or wrong.  Only God can determine what is good and what is evil.  The minute we begin asking ourselves if something is good or bad, we have sinned.  The correct question to ask is, “Does God say this is good or bad?”  And it is the same with judging people.  It is not up to Samuel to decide which of Jesse’s sons would make a great king.  That is for God to choose, because he is God and we are not.  Isaiah said it this way:

Isaiah 55:8-9  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares Yehovah.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

God is brighter than any of us.  And the level that he thinks about things is as much higher than our level of thinking as the sky is higher than the ground.  We are stuck thinking earthly, while God thinks heavenly.  So we should not be surprised when God does things very differently from the way we would.

This was a problem for the religious leaders in Jerusalem with Jesus.  No one would choose a country boy from the podunk town of Nazareth to be the Messiah.  He was not from the right family.  He had no formal rabbinic training. He did not follow all of their traditions.  He didn’t even spend much time in Jerusalem, but mainly stayed in the sticks up in Galilee.  He was nobody’s choice.  But God chose to send him specifically this way.  And part of the reason is that God wanted to show us what really matters.  

Search the Scriptures.  You will see God using unconventional methods and people no one would choose to get the job done over and over.   Say it is 1400 BC, and you want to take the most heavily defended fortified city in the world?  Not a single General in the Pentagon would come up with this strategy:   Take no weapons but trumpets and walk around the city seven times, and shout.   But that was how God had the Israelites take Jericho.

God wants Israel to defeat the army of Midian. How does he accomplish that?  First, He chose this unknown guy as a leader for the people.  A person you would have never selected because he is so scared of the Midianites that he’s hiding underground to thresh his wheat.  And then God looks at the Midianite army with over 130,000 soldiers, and then at Gideon’s army with his 32,000 soldiers, and He says, “Okay, Gideon, they outnumber you 4 to 1.  You clearly have too many soldiers, so send most of them home.”  “Okay, now you have 300 soldiers against their 130,000; they outnumber us over 400 to 1. That is much better, God says, I like those odds.

The children of Israel escape from Egypt, but Pharaoh decides to pursue them.   The Israelites are trapped by a body of water behind them, and the Egyptian army is charging at them with hundreds of chariots and the finest weapons of the day, while they have no weapons at all.  And God says, “Now we have the Egyptians right where we want them.”  Why does God consistently want to accomplish his mission with the odds stacked so high against his people? Paul answered this question in one of his letters to the Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 1:26-2:1 (NIV)   Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that….

“So that…”  Wait a minute.  Slow down here.  We don’t often get explanations of why God does things.  (That is probably because we are not able to understand the explanations, much like my parents telling 3-year-old me why I shouldn’t cross the street by myself.)  So here comes the why:

…so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

God does this so that no one can boast, saying, “Look what I did.”  Do you think any of Gideon’s 300 soldiers went home after that battle and bragged to their wives about how they fought so well and defeated the 130,000 Midianites?  Nobody would believe them.  God fixed it so everyone would know He won the battle.  He defeated the Egyptians in the Sea of Reeds.  Everyone left those situations praising God and boasting of God’s power and his victory.  Salvation – whether it is deliverance from the enemies of this world or deliverance from the enemy of sin and death, salvation has always been about what God does; it is not of our works, lest any man should boast.  Paul repeats it:

Ephesians 2:8-9   For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

See, soldiers of Gideon, it was by God’s grace you were saved.  Hey Israelites strolling through dry ground between walls of water, guess what?   God did this, and you didn’t do anything to deserve it; he did it out of his chesed (his loyal covenant love and grace).  Hey church member, you can’t earn your salvation either.  Your obedience is your way of telling God you love Him.

I sat in a deacon’s meeting one day and listened to a discussion about whether our church should join with other local churches to form a mission to the poor and marginalized of our county.  And the debate went as you would expect, with men raising reasonable questions, such as: “Do we have the financial resources to participate in this?”  “Do we have the people who will volunteer to fill the roles needed?”  “Is this something we are capable of doing?”  “How long a commitment would we be making?”  There were 20 minutes spent analyzing the situation as a CEO would consider the pros and cons of opening a new business location, or as a general would consider the options for fighting a battle.  I asked the question that I thought was the only important one: “But does God want this to be done?”

But the discussion soon returned to the logistics. Someone actually said, “Well, if God wanted us to do it, He would have already given us the resources to do it.”   And in the end, it was decided that we would not participate in the project.  Without this large church’s support, the plan for that mission fell apart. And I believe that day, God’s plan was temporarily delayed by our disobedience.  But God wanted this mission to happen, so he found another church that would do it.   And it became a very successful outreach to many poor and marginalized in our community for many years.  The idea that was missed in that meeting was that God calls and then, as you go about being obedient, He equips you for the task, supplying your every need.  

If we only attempt to do the things we currently have the resources for, we have no faith.  If we only attempt tasks we are capable of doing, there is no need for God to join us.  We complete the task, but there is no growth in our faith, no growth in our relationship with God.  If we are called to attempt impossible tasks, then we leave room for God to join with us.  We do the task under his power, not our own. With resources He supplies from His riches.  That experience deepens our faith in God and strengthens our relationship with God.  Of course, God could do all these things without us.  He could have rescued the Israelites without Moses; He didn’t need Moses’s staff to part the sea or win a battle.  But he chooses to call us alongside him to do the work because he wants our relationship with him to grow.  

We looked at two stories of two different Sauls.  Acts 9 of Saul and Ananias, and 1 Samuel 16, of King Saul and Samuel.  The Hebrew word Shaul is a verb meaning ‘to ask’. As a name, it means ‘one who is asked’.  Saul in the Old Testament was asked to be king of Israel.  He was asked to be a king who was obedient to God, who would lead the people in the way God directed.  Saul in the New Testament, was asked by God to be a leader, a missionary to Jews, Gentiles, and kings.  Two Sauls, one a colossal failure and the other recorded in the Bible as one of God’s best servants, and the difference is obedience.

And these two stories illustrate the unlikely people God chooses to do his work.  We see them as unlikely because we don’t see them as God sees them.  The people in Acts 9, including Ananias, looked at Saul and saw a threat.  A man who could cause them harm.  What did God see when he looked at Saul?   A man who wanted to fight for God.  A man who was not comfortable just complaining about a problem but was willing to give 100% to solve a problem. A man of high commitment and zeal.  Sure, Saul was wrong, but in God’s thinking, what a fantastic missionary a man like this could be if he turned toward the truth.  We need to see people with God’s eyes. 

Where we see threats and danger, God sees purpose and commitment.  Where we see Insignificance, God sees potential.  Where we see impossibility, God sees opportunity to grow our faith.  And where we see broken pasts, God sees redeemed futures.

Let us seek to see the world through God’s eyes, not our own.  Let us see people as God sees them, looking for the potential within them.  And let us always be open to respond obediently to God’s call on us to do things that are beyond our ability, for then we partner with Him and grow in Him. 

December 10, 2025 –  Shalom, and the War You Didn’t Realize You Were Fighting— Acts #24

David Chupp Acts , , , , , , , ,

December 10, 2025 –  Shalom, and the War You Didn’t Realize You Were Fighting— Acts #24
Acts 9:1-9

Words in Hebrew have very rich meanings. Last time, we discussed the Hebrew word ‘shema’.  Shema means listen, but more than listen, it means listen and obey.  Obedience is not optional.  If you did not obey, then you did not hear.  Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” You will find a version of this 15 times in the New Testament. That isn’t just a poetic phrase Jesus threw out there.  He isn’t speaking English.  It is about shema.  Jesus is talking about obedience.   “If you hear what I am saying, then be obedient.”

Today, we look at the word Shalom.  It begins with the same letter, ש (shin).  It means peace.  And peace is the candle that many of you lit this past week for Advent.  But like the Hebrew word shema, this word has a richer meaning.  Shalom means more than our concept of peace.  It carries the idea of wholeness, that all is well, that all is well with you, and with your relationship with your neighbor, and in your relationship with God.

  In Acts 8, Shalom was disturbed due to this great persecution of the followers of Jesus.

Acts 8:3  But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

All was not well.   And when this persecution hit hard, as we discussed the last few weeks, the people scattered.  Philip ended up in Samaria.  Some went further north up to Damascus in Syria.  That brings us to chapter 9.

Acts 9:1-9   But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?  And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

We have all heard news reports of rare incidents in which police mistakenly raid the wrong house.   Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of your front door being bashed open, a flash-bang grenade going off in your living room, and then a heavily armed SWAT team entering your home.  Unfortunately, it happens.  Sometimes the tip the police received was incorrect, or the address was incomplete, or a simple error was made. The police did not mean to raid the wrong house.  They had warrants signed by a judge granting them authority to enter the home at that address.  They were well-trained.  They were putting forth their best effort in the raid.  They were highly motivated to apprehend the suspect and protect the public. But they were utterly wrong.

That is what is happening with Saul in Acts 9.  Saul has papers from the high priest authorizing him to go into homes, arrest people, and bring them back to Jerusalem.  Saul is one of the best-trained scholars of scripture alive in his day.  He is giving 100% effort to rid the country of these Jesus followers, to protect the public from heresy.  He is highly motivated, going into homes and dragging out the followers of this splinter group.  And he is entirely wrong.  

In Saul’s mind, he is a soldier defending God’s honor. He is cleaning up Israel. He is protecting the faith. If anyone asked Saul, “Why are you doing this?” he would have said, “Because I love God!”  But he is 100% wrong.  Because sincerity does not make you right, commitment does not equal correctness, and power does not equal purity.   Legal process does not equal morality, nor does strength of conviction make you holy.   Passion without truth is dangerous.  

God has to intervene.  So he throws his own flashbang grenade at Saul’s feet, knocking him to the ground and blinding him.   And the voice from heaven asks Saul, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  Not why are you persecuting these people, or why are you persecuting these followers, but why are you persecuting me?  Then Saul asks an essential question: “Who are you, Lord?”

At this point, Paul is aware he is not dealing with humanity.  This blinding flash of light was nothing any human could produce.  Is he dealing with an angel, or God himself?  So he asks, “Who are you, Lord?  (Lord being the equivalent of us saying a very respectful “sir”.)  The voice responds: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”  This is a lot for Saul.  First, the voice is Jesus, whom he had been told was dead, crucified as a criminal, a blasphemer.  But instead, Jesus is very much alive.  And Jesus wields the power of God.  And Saul finds that he is not rescuing people from a heresy, but waging war against God himself.  So God gives Saul a three-day timeout.  Three days to consider all of this.  Three days when he can not see.  And he fasts from food and drink.  And you can bet blind Saul prayed, and prayed hard.

Saul thought he was waging war with these heretics who had disturbed the peace of Jerusalem.  But it was Saul who was disturbing the shalom of God by waging this war.  This story is an example of a great paradox of the message of Jesus.  As many of you read in our Advent reading this past week, the prophets say that the Messiah will come as the Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6   For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

The Messiah is the ‘Prince of Peace.’  And the first to hear the news of Jesus’ birth were the shepherds in the field with their sheep, who heard it from the angels.  We sing it in the hymn, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”:

“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, 
That glorious song of old.
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men, 
From Heav’n’s all-gracious King.”

Isaiah said He is the ‘Prince of Peace’.  The angels sang that he comes to bring peace on earth.  But then how do we reconcile what Jesus says here:

Matthew 10:34-36   Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

 How do we reconcile these two passages?  The peace that Jesus brings is first and foremost peace with God.  True shalom with God.  Before Jesus, we had no peace with God.  Paul says it this way:

Romans 8:7-8  “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.  

When you are in your sin, there is hostility towards God.  You are living on the king’s land, but you do not follow the king’s rules.  You are a rebel.  You are waging war with God.  The only way to end your rebellion is to ask for forgiveness, which God freely grants through Jesus. And then to begin to live a different life that is not in rebellion to the king’s rule, but to follow him in obedience.  As Paul says in the preceding verse:  

Romans 8:6 “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

You can choose peace with God (shalom) or hostility towards God.  There is no middle ground.  See this again in James:  

James 4:4 (NLT)  Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. 

You have to choose.  Jesus told his disciples that peace with God can be theirs:

John 14:27 (NLT)   I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart.  And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give.  So don’t be troubled or afraid.

And the Bible is consistent.  For though the carol said “it came upon the midnight clear,” “Peace on the earth, goodwill to men, from Heaven’s all-gracious King.”  That is not what the angels said.  Here is what the angels actually said:

Luke 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased! 

Wait, there is a catch to that peace with God the angels sang about.  The only ones who get peace are those with whom God is pleased.  Those who are in right relationship with him.  Those who follow his son Jesus in salvation and obedience.  They have peace, shalom, with God. Everyone else is still at war with God.  So let’s see that in a carol that gets it right, “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”.  

Hark! The herald angels sing,  
Glory to the newborn King!  
Peace on earth, and mercy mild, 
God and sinners reconciled.

Peace on earth is tied to this:  God and sinners reconciled.  There is no peace for us with God until we are reconciled to him through the forgiveness of our sins and the promise we make to follow him as our Lord and live in obedience to him.  

Now look what happens with Saul.  Saul discovers on the Damascus Road that he and his SWAT teams are raiding the wrong house.  He is an enemy of God.  Once Saul stops fighting Jesus, he begins an incredible journey of reconciliation.  After he is reconciled to God, he will eventually seek fellowship with the same followers he persecuted.  And he will become a leader in this fellowship, a missionary of reconciliation.

Paul calls peace a fruit of the Holy Spirit living within us, and he says:

Romans 12:18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

But none of that can happen until his heart is made right with God.  Jesus tried to make this clear to his disciples in John 16:

John 16:33  I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace…

You may have shalom, peace with God.  You are at peace with God when you are in a right relationship with Him. But that is not the end of the verse.  Keep reading to see the paradox.

John 16:33  I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world, you will have tribulation.

If you don’t understand shalom, if you don’t understand the kind of peace Jesus is talking about, then this verse makes no sense.  “Which is it, Jesus, peace or tribulation?”  But when you have peace with God, you are then at war with the world.  You will have tribulation.  And now, finish the verse to see the best news.  

John 16:33  I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation.  But take heart; I have overcome the world.

Your enemy, the world, has already been defeated.  The way of this world, what the Bible calls the way of the flesh, was defeated on the cross of Jesus.  Sin, which kept us enemies of God, was defeated, so now we can be friends with God.  And then death was defeated.  Jesus has overcome.  The outcome of the war has been decided.  But the battle still rages within us as long as we persist in disobedience. 

Peace can be ours now if we seek Him and obey Him.  And complete peace, complete shalom, will exist in this world one day.   The Prince of Peace will reign over all, and there will be no more enemies.  Come, Lord Jesus, come.  

Saul’s transformation begins with two simple questions: the first, “Who are You, Lord?”  This is the most critical question.  Who is Jesus to Saul at this moment of the blinding light?  He is no one to Saul, just a teacher whom the Romans killed.  But it is in this moment that Saul realizes who Jesus really is, the living Son of God.  And this makes all the difference for Saul.

Then the second question:  “What do you want me to do?” Now that Saul knows who Jesus is, he wants to listen to Jesus and obey him.  This is shema, hear and obey.  And that leads to peace with God.   Shema leads to shalom.  You have to shema (listen and obey) before you find shalom, peace with God.  Peace with God requires listening and obeying.  In Acts 8, Saul’s relationship with God is like a child pulling on a rope in a tug-of-war against his father.  He pulls with all his strength until he is exhausted. It is hopeless.  Finally, the father smiles at the child.  And the child puts the rope aside, and the father embraces the child. The child’s peace didn’t come from winning the battle—it came from surrendering into the father’s arms.   It is here in Acts 9 that Saul drops the rope and surrenders to Jesus. So must we.

It was Christmas Day, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was listening to the church bells ring out, representing the angels’ proclamation of peace on earth, goodwill to men.  But Longfellow had no peace.  It is 1863.  He recently lost his wife in a tragic accident.  And his son, Charles, was away fighting in our country’s brutal Civil War. And in the midst of this turmoil, he pens these words:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
, Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
the hearthstones of a continent,
and made forlorn
the households born
of peace on earth, goodwill to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, goodwill to men.”

God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.  Jesus is indeed the Prince of Peace.  Jesus wants us to have that shalom with him, that right relationship that comes with His forgiveness and salvation.  The peace that comes by shema — listening to the voice of God and being obedient.  

This Christmas season, I want you to consider your peace with God.  How is that relationship?  Could it use more communication?  Could it use more obedience?  We earnestly seek the peace of God in our lives, even as we yearn for the day when God’s peace will reign supreme in this world.  We look forward to that day when God redeems the earth, that day when all is well.

December 3, 2025 –  Philip follows the Holy Spirit – Shema— Acts #23

David Chupp Acts , , , , , , , ,

December 3, 2025 –  Philip follows the Holy Spirit – Shema— Acts #23
Acts 8:26-40

Are you ready to be a disciple?

Shema – it means “listen” in Hebrew, but it means much more than “listen”.  Because in the Jewish culture of the Old Testament, listening implies obedience.  There is no concept of listening to God without being obedient.  It is just wrong; it is a sin.

This word is so important. It is the title and the first word of the prayer every Jewish person has prayed several times a day for thousands of years.  The prayer is a collection of passages from Deuteronomy.  And this is the first prayer Mary and Joseph taught Jesus as a small boy.  And he prayed this prayer every day.  And this concept of shema is critical to a follower of Jesus. 

We continue our story of Philip in Acts 8, and in this story, Philip shows us what it looks like to listen for God’s voice and obey without delay.  Through him, God brings salvation to a man who was seeking truth but didn’t yet know where to find it.

Acts 8:26-40   Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.”
And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” 
And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”

Philip was in Samaria experiencing revival.  Things were going great!  People were coming to know Jesus as their Messiah.  Lives were being changed.  Miracles were happening.  People were being healed.  Crowds were eager to hear the Gospel.  It was the perfect situation for a church leader.  Then God says, “Go south to the desert road.”  Everything is going great, so go to the desert.  How does that make sense?  Leave the crowds?  Leave success?  Leave the work God is blessing? For a desert road?   No preacher today with any sense would leave a place of great success and go to a deserted land.  (You notice preachers rarely get called to leave a big, successful church and go to a tiny, struggling church in the middle of nowhere.) That desert road led to Gaza.  Now that is a place that you probably wouldn’t want to go today.  It wasn’t much better in Philip’s day.  But God had an assignment for Philip, and Philip didn’t argue… he listened and obeyed.

Many of God’s most significant assignments begin with an interruption in routine and a disruption in comfort. Abraham is minding his own business at home, and God calls him to leave everything he knows.  Moses is tending sheep, just as he has done every day for the past 40 years.  He has a good life in Midian. He has no thoughts of ever returning to the country he was kicked out of.  But God interrupts his life and gives him a difficult task. Mary is engaged to be married.  It was an exciting time in her life. She was planning a wedding, getting everything ready to set up a household with Joseph.  And then God interrupts her in a significant way.

God’s task assignments often come with few details.  Now this can be frustrating at times.  We like to know the whole plan, including all the details, before we set out on a project.  We want to know how long it will last, how much it will cost, and what equipment we will need. But God only gave Philip step 1:   Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.    No mention of why.  No mention of what he would do there. But this is the way God usually works.  He rarely gives anyone the big picture up front.

We often miss this when we read the scripture in the psalms:

Psalm 119:105   Your word is a lamp to my feet… 

What is a lamp to my feet?  They didn’t have flashlights in those days.  They used oil lamps held by a string near their feet.  It provided just enough light for the next step.  They couldn’t see any further ahead.  And this is typically how God reveals his plans or tasks for us.  Just one step at a time.  That requires trust.  That requires faith.  

God sends a messenger to Philip.  (That is literally what the word translated ‘angel’ in our English Bibles means.  Both ‘angelos’ in Greek and ‘malach’ in Hebrew mean messenger.)  A few verses later in this passage, it says, “And the Spirit said to Philip…”  I am not sure that there is a big difference in these two statements of the delivery of God’s message to Philip.  In Jewish thought, there is little distinction, as seen in Acts 23:9.

Acts 23:9   Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?”

God very rarely speaks through messengers who take human form.  And contrary to every painting you have ever seen, angels do not have wings.   Angels in human form are the least frequent way God sends messages.  He occasionally speaks through dreams or visions, but the most common way God speaks is through scripture. When you read the Bible, it is God’s word to you.  It is God speaking to you.  And we pray to converse with God.  Mark Batterson says that God most frequently speaks in whispers.  In his book, “Whisper”, Batterson notes that to hear someone whisper, you have to draw close to them.  God speaks to those who draw close.  And God speaks to those who listen.

But the question is: Do we give God a chance to speak to us?  

Do we allow God to speak in our prayer time?  Are we listening, not just talking?  Prayer is meant to be a conversation, not a monologue.  

When we read Scripture, do we allow time for God to speak? Tim Makie of the Bible Project frequently refers to the Bible as meditation literature.  It is not meant to be read like a cookie recipe.  It is not meant to be read like a newspaper or a history book.  It is intended to be read slowly and meditated upon.  Often God has something to whisper to you when you read scripture.  (That is when I most often hear God speak to me.)

Do we make space for God to speak to us?  If every moment of our life is filled with noise, we will miss the whisper of God.  Have you ever wondered why printed books have margins?  They could save a lot of paper if they just used all the space on the page instead of leaving an inch on all sides.  But pages printed to the edge are harder to read.  Your eyes can’t track the lines as well.  The margins are necessary.   And we need margin in our lives.  We fill every moment with constant input, from others or from a television or radio.  There is no blank time, no margin.  It is in quietness that the Spirit often whispers.

God speaks — but do we pause long enough to hear Him?

God speaks to the obedient.   You may not hear God speak because you weren’t obedient to the last request.  If Philip had not been obedient to God’s order to go to the desert, He would not have been in a position for the next instruction.  Only after he has followed God to the desert can he see the chariot, the Ethiopian, and the scroll.  You have to be obedient in the small things that you may not understand to be in a position to do the task God has for you.

But Philip follows God’s instruction to travel to the desert road.  Then he sees a man from south of Egypt, the land called Cush in the Old Testament.  (Currently known as northern Sudan.  This man is an official in the court of the Kandake (the queen mother).  (“The king of Ethiopia was venerated as the child of the sun and regarded as too sacred a personage to discharge the secular functions of royalty; these were performed on his behalf by the queen-mother, who bore the dynastic title Kandakē.”  NICNT  FF Bruce 

He has apparently been to the recent Jewish festival of Pentecost.  He is what they called a God-fearer.  He believes there is a god named Yehovah, and he is convinced of His power, but he has not fully committed. Today, we would call him a seeker.   He may have witnessed, or at least heard about, the commotion in the temple courtyard at Pentecost, and may have heard some talk about Jesus.  But he is going home confused.

God’s plan is good.  His timing is flawless.  Look at this: This person, who has been seeking God but not understanding everything, is alone on the road (he has time on his hands) and trying to read scripture about the Messiah.  He wants to understand it, but he needs help.  So God arranged Philip to be there at that moment.   It is a perfect plan.  But it all hinges on one thing—the obedience of Philip.

God’s great plan will fail if Philip does not follow it.  What happens is Philip says no?  If Philip says, “No way God is calling me to go down that desert road.  That road to Gaza is dangerous.  I am needed here in Samaria.  I am leading a massive movement here.  I am too important to the work being done here to waste that time on the road.  Notice that from Samaria, Philip will travel 50-70 miles on foot.  It will be a 3-4 day journey each way.  This will take Philip away from his work in Samaria for more than a week. And why?  He does not know any details.  The only answer he has to the question of why is obedience.

So what happens to that Ethiopian if Philip is not obedient?  Even if Philip quits on God, God is not going to quit on that Ethiopian.  God is not going to abandon a seeker.  What does God do when people fail to follow and mess up his plan?  Well, fortunately, there is a book that tells us precisely what  God does and how he deals with people.  So let’s look in the Old Testament to see two ways God accomplishes his plan when we are disobedient. 

1.  He gives the disobedient person another chance to follow.  Our example is Jonah.  God had a great plan for turning Nineveh, the capital of the nation of Assyria, to him.  It was up to Jonah to go and preach.  But Jonah was disobedient and got on a boat headed in the opposite direction.  Did God give up on Ninevah?  Did God give up on Jonah?  No.  God created a storm, and God ordained the sailors’ lots to tell them Jonah was the problem.  And then God rescued Jonah from drowning with a great fish.  And then God asks Jonah again, “So how about now, Jonah?  What do you think about going to Nineveh today?

God went to a lot of trouble to encourage Jonah to be obedient, to give him another chance.  God is forgiving of Jonah’s disobedience.  He shows Jonah great mercy.  Do you remember why Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh in the first place?  Because he knew God was merciful and forgiving.  Jonah knew that God would give the Ninevites a chance to repent.   And Jonah didn’t really want the Ninevites to have an opportunity for repentance.  They were his enemy.  But Jonah finally obeys and goes, and God shows mercy on the people of Nineveh.  And the end of the 4-chapter book teaches much about mercy to all people. But what would God have done if Jonah had not finally decided to be obedient? 

2.  If God’s chosen person for a task refuses to be obedient, then God chooses another person to do the task.  For an example of this, we look at King Saul in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 13-16.  God chose Saul to be king over Israel and lead his people faithfully.  But Saul repeatedly disobeyed God’s commands.  I’ll briefly mention two specific examples: He was impatient and did not wait for the priest Samuel to perform the sacrifices before battle, so he offered them himself.  He was not a priest and was not authorized to make any sacrifices.  Secondly, he refused to carry out God’s instructions concerning the Amalekites.   The Amalekites were the nation that refused the children of Israel passage through their land, forcing them to take a considerable detour.  So Saul was to conquer the Amalekites, and everything in the city belonged to God.  No man of Saul’s army was to take any plunder from the attack.  And Saul conquered the Amalekites but allowed his people to take cattle and sheep from the land, even though God had forbidden it.  So after a long history of Saul’s disobedience, God tells the prophet, Samuel, this:

1 Samuel 15:10-11   The word of Yehovah came to Samuel: “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.

God has watched Saul, his chosen person, be disobedient so many times that God regrets giving him the job of king.  God has given him chance after chance, but Saul refuses to be obedient. So Samuel goes to Saul, who tells him, “Look, I destroyed the Amalekites just as God said to do.”  And Samuel asks Saul, “Then what are all these sheep and cattle doing here?”  “Oh,” Saul says, “we took the best of the sheep and cattle from the Amalakites to sacrifice them to God.”   So Samuel says:

1 Samuel 15:22-23   And Samuel said, “Has Yehovah as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of Yehovah? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.  For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of Yehovah, he has also rejected you from being king.

In other words, “You’re fired.”  God will appoint someone else to do the job of king, because you can not be obedient.  God then sent Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint a new king, David, a young shepherd boy, whose best qualification for kingship is his obedience.

Look at what Samuel said.  Listen and obey — shema.  What Saul did would be like someone today doing something in disobedience to God to make a lot of money and then excusing their behavior by saying, “Well, I’m going to give some of that money to the church.”  God doesn’t need your money.  He wants you to obey his voice.  He wants you to listen and obey.  You can not obey if you don’t listen.

Thankfully, Philip in Acts 8 listened and was obedient.  He went without hesitation to the desert road. Had he hesitated, he would have missed that divine appointment.  But he was able to explain the scriptures of Isaiah to the Ethiopian who accepted Jesus and asked to be baptized. There are people around us who are spiritually hungry — often quietly.  Like the Ethiopian, they may have status, authority, wealth, education, or influence.  But what they really need is understanding.  There are many people you encounter who look like they have it all together, but they are quietly asking:  How do I make sense of life?  Is this Jesus stuff real?  What am I missing?  God wants to position obedient disciples alongside searching souls, but the disciples must listen and be obedient to the call.  Sometimes all you have to do is walk across the room.  

Do you hear God’s message to you?

Some people say they have never heard God speak.  Maybe you haven’t heard God’s voice, but you have seen its evidence.  God’s initial word, spoken to the cosmos in Genesis 1, is still echoing through the universe.  He said, “Let there be light”, and “let there be stars”, and in our universe, we now have evidence that stars are still being formed.  God’s word is not finished.

Does God still speak?   I can testify that God is still speaking.  You may never experience an angel, a divine messenger.  Most people in the Bible never did either.  But He speaks through his word and through others, and through whispers.   The real question is:  Are you listening? Or is God’s voice crowded out by other voices?   We also see in this passage that God honors those who seek him.  I challenge you to seek God this next week earnestly.  Spend some time in the quiet.  Spend time meditating on His word.  Listen for his whispers.  And be obedient.  As Samuel said, 

1 Samuel 3:10.  Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

November 25, 2025 –  Responses to the Gospel — “Thanks” & “No Thanks” — Acts #22

David Chupp Acts , , , , ,

November 25, 2025 –  Responses to the Gospel — “Thanks” & “No Thanks” — Acts #22
Acts 8:9-24

One problem when you are going through a book of the Bible in a class or a sermon series is that you come to a time in the calendar when you want to cover a particular topic, like this week.  All of our thoughts turn to Thanksgiving.  And since you all are already thinking in that direction, it is important to discuss what the scripture says about what is already on our minds.  But we are slowly working through the Book of Acts, so let’s see what God gives.

Acts 8:9-24   But there was a man named Simon, who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is the power of God that is called Great.” And they paid attention to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip. And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed.

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.” And Simon answered, “Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.

Well, we have this fascinating story about a man named Simon, a magician who tried to buy the Holy Spirit from the apostles. …Happy Thanksgiving!

Remember that it was the persecution of the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem that led them to leave Jerusalem and scatter to other places.   And last week, we discussed Philip, one of the seven men chosen, along with Stephen, to help disperse the church’s funds to widows and those in need.  He flees persecution in Jerusalem and ends up in Samaria, a place Jesus’ disciples didn’t want to go.  But Jesus had predicted that his followers would take the gospel to Jerusalem, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.

Acts 1:8   But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

They reach Samaria here in Acts chapter 8.  The ends of the earth would have to wait.  Now they kept spreading in Acts, to Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and Spain.  But Jesus’ prediction about the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth?  To this day, it has not yet been fulfilled.  A month ago, I mentioned some villages in Sierra Leone that still don’t have any idea who Jesus is.  There, where the gospel has not yet reached, evil prevails, and child sacrifice continues.  But the gospel is now reaching those villages, and Jesus’ prophecy that the ends of the earth would be reached draws closer to its final fulfillment.

But here is Philip in Samaria, and we discussed last week that the people there were very receptive to the gospel.  Luke tells us:

Acts 8:8   So there was much joy in that city.

The gospel brings joy… to those who accept it.    And they did

Acts 8:12   But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

Now, when the apostles in Jerusalem hear that Philip is baptizing Samaritans, Peter and John go to investigate.  

Acts 8:14-17   Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

Don’t get too caught up in this particular example: they were first baptized in the name of Jesus, then the apostles prayed and laid hands on them, and they received the Spirit.  In the Bible, the spirit comes sometimes with laying on of hands, sometimes not, sometimes close to water baptism, sometimes not. There are several different ways it happens in the New Testament.  What we need to remember is that the Holy Spirit is God’s gift to us under God’s control.  God is sovereign; he gives it in His time.

And in Luke 8, he sets up a contrast in how people responded to the gospel.  Luke contrasts the reactions of the Samaritans to the gospel with those of a man named Simon.  

What do we know of this Simon?

Acts 8:9-11   But there was a man named Simon, who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is the power of God that is called Great.” And they paid attention to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic.

He practiced magic.  The Greek word is ‘mageuo’, from which we get our word ‘magic’,  but it is not magic as we think of it today.  We think of magicians like David Copperfield or other modern magicians who are, in reality, illusionists.  They perform things that trick your eyes and mind, like sawing someone in half or making things disappear.  They use elaborate props to trick you into thinking they have performed the impossible.

But a better English translation of ‘mageuo’ is ‘sorcerer’.  (And we see that word used in many English translations, KJV and NIV included.)  Throughout the Bible, sorcery is recognized not as illusion, but as a genuine power.  We know that God has miraculous power, but the Bible also recognises other supernatural powers at work in our world. Sorcery or magic in the Bible is always an actual power that is in opposition to God’s power.

This Simon in Acts 8 makes use of some supernatural power from evil spirits.  The Bible is clear that there are powers of evil at work in the world.  We too often downplay the work of evil spirits in our world, relegating this to horror movies.  But Scripture speaks of the danger of powers and principalities.  This is not something to laugh at or to toy with.  So this Simon performed some miracles with his sorcery and deceived the people into thinking he was a man of God; perhaps they even thought he was the Messiah.  The Scriptures warn us to test the spirits.  Do not believe someone is from God just because they can do amazing miracles.  The book of Revelation speaks of this as a problem in the last days.  

But now Simon encounters the true power of God, the Holy Spirit, through his indwelling presence in Philip, a follower of Jesus.  Simon recognizes that this power in Philip is greater than the power he uses.  So Simon believes what Philip is preaching, and he is baptized and stays close to Philip.   That phrase “continued with Philip” carries an intensity greater than our English words present.   Other translations note “He followed Philip everywhere.”  He wants to know more.  But what exactly does he want?

He sees signs and miracles and is amazed.  There is a difference between being amazed by a miracle or a power and being humbled by grace.   As the story goes on, we realize that Simon didn’t really become a full-fledged follower of Jesus.  And Luke drops some clues in the story.

But then Peter and John arrive. They came from Jerusalem to see what was going on with these Samaritans.  And Simon sees that Peter and John:

Acts 8:13    Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip. And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed.

For example, we read that Luke said the Samaritans “believed the good news about the kingdom of God and Jesus Christ.” (Acts 8:12)  But about Simon, he says, “Even Simon himself believed,”  but he doesn’t state exactly what Simon believes.  Sometimes it is essential to note what is not said.  That’s just a hint.  Luke makes it clear here.

Acts 8:18-19   Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” 

Simon didn’t believe the gospel message of Jesus.  He wasn’t interested in the truth of the Gospel; he was just amazed by the power.    He had made himself very popular by using the power of evil, impressing the people.  Now Peter and John come in with a greater power, and he wants to purchase it.  He thinks God works like a magician’s guild — you pay to learn the secret, the new trick.  

Now look at Peter’s response to Simon:

Acts 8:20-21  “But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!   You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.”

Does that seem harsh to you?  Let me put this in a situation you might understand better. 

Imagine that you have a spouse who is a great cook, and one day you meet someone who is wowed by your spouse’s cooking, and they say, “Wow, she is a great cook.  How much do you want for her?  That is just not right.  But Simon’s sin is even worse than that. The Holy Spirit isn’t merely another person—He is God Himself. Simon has offered to buy God himself, as if God were something you purchased at a store!

Simon is trying to use the ways of the world to control the things of God.   So Peter reacts strongly:

Acts 8:22-23  “Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.

Peter says, You are still in your sins.  You have not given your heart to Jesus.    You are in the bond of iniquity — in bondage to sin — a slave to sin.   You need to repent.

And how does Simon answer?

Acts 8:24   And Simon answered, “Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.”

There is fear in Simon’s response, but no repentance.  He wants to be relieved of any consequences.  He does not ask for forgiveness or cleansing.  He does not commit to changing his ways.  He wants protection, not transformation.  He still does not understand the gospel.  Repentance is not being sorry you got caught — It’s being broken because you have offended God.

Now there are a lot of lessons from this passage.  We could talk about how Simon was all about the power, all about the show.  He was drawn to the people preaching the gospel because of their powerful display.  People today are still captivated by the spectacular — they attend a church based on celebrity pastors,  or incredible music, great programs, or impressive buildings.  Unfortunately, some are like Simon the Sorcerer.  It’s all about the show.  But fascination is not faith.   

We could talk about how Simon was amazed by power—but not humbled by grace.  Simon only came to God for what he might get out of Him.  He understood nothing about the gospel. It’s possible to get close to God’s movement, to belong to a body of believers, to be baptized, and yet still not be transformed.

But I am supposed to be headed to a Thanksgiving message, so let me focus on this:Simon thought he could purchase the power of God.   If you are wealthy enough, then you can buy your way into a political office. You can buy power, prestige, and titles, but you cannot buy the Holy Spirit.  Your money will not influence God.  You can’t purchase salvation.  You can’t buy forgiveness.  These are gifts God gives freely to surrendered hearts.

It’s a good thing that God’s grace is not for sale.  There is no way any of us could ever afford it.  The price is too high.  Only Jesus could pay that price.  We should live lives of continual thanksgiving to God who gives us every breath we take.

Psalm 100:4  “Enter his gates with Thanksgiving…”
1 Thessalonians 5:18  “…give thanks in all circumstances.”
Ephesians 5:20  “…always giving thanks to God the Father for everything.”
Philippians 4:6  “…in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”

We should not come into God’s presence without a voice of gratitude.  We should always enter into prayer with an attitude of thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is rooted in joyful repentance.  We need to check our motivation.  Are we seeking Jesus for His blessings or because He is Lord?

We need to watch our hearts.  God doesn’t just want our worship songs.  He wants our surrender.  We need to reject any attitude of entitlement. We do not give thanks because we have everything we want;  We give thanks because God has given us everything we need in Christ.  We must guard against a consumer Christianity.  We don’t make deals with God.  We can’t purchase financial success by tithing.  We can’t earn extra blessings from God by doing good deeds.  Faith isn’t a spiritual marketplace.

We do these things, we obey God because we love him.  They are acts of gratitude.  Thanksgiving is often not what you say, but what you do.

Simon shows us the danger of a heart not right with God —a faith without surrender, a belief without gratitude.  But Samaria shows us what happens when the gospel takes root —joy erupts, worship spreads, and lives are transformed.  This Thanksgiving —let us not be like Simon, pursuing what God gives.  Let us seek God Himself, the source of every good and perfect gift.

2 Corinthians 9:15   Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!