Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Have What It Takes? | New Testament | Acts 22

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

What does it mean to look like a Christian? Do you have the right Christian friends? Do you do all of the good Christian things? What if you don't? In today's episode, Tanyauses Acts 22 to discuss the danger of believing you're in the "in" group. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Acts 22

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. What do you carry around on your keychain? What do you have in your wallet? In my city, people have their gym membership cards and their grocery store fuel saver cards and their key rings. And both offer exclusive benefits that come from being a member of the club. Or have you heard that slogan, what's in your wallet? My husband got an American Express before we left the country because it's supposed to prevent foreign transaction fees.

it worked really, really well. Almost none of the establishments in Europe would accept it. So we didn't really accumulate any foreign transaction fees. Sometimes we carry around our identity as Christians in the same kind of way. Like a punch card or a membership card. We make sure we keep up with the Christiane activities we're supposed to or hang out with the people we're supposed to so that we keep our membership in good standing. And when we do, we feel like we've sort of earned the benefits our membership offers.

But when we do this, we see ourselves as those on the good side of grace, and we think there are other people who are on, well, the other side of grace. And we think there are those who are unreachable. Who do you think is unreachable with the gospel? Maybe because of what they've done, what they currently believe, who they associate with, what they do for a living, you kind of put them in a category of people who God just can't reach. Well, who better to address our misgiven assumptions in the apostle Paul, the former persecutor of early Christians whose actual job it was to go find Jesus followers and put them in prison. It was a miracle Paul was converted at all. How did someone on the opposing side of Jesus become one of his most faithful followers? What's the answer?

Well, it was pretty simple, according to Paul. It was because the Lord Jesus Christ met him on the road to Damascus. That's it. Now, we've been traveling around a lot with Paul in the book of Acts, and his letters to the churches that he started. And he shared his testimony before. But now though we're toward the end of Acts, Acts chapter 22, he's going to share it again because he's finally reached Jerusalem. And this is a place that he talks about many times, but he keeps saying that he was warned not to go because of what could happen to him there.

Pretty good warning, because it's not so good. Now Jerusalem is also a place that's beloved to him, though, because he was someone who was born Jewish. So he has an end with this crowd, the others do not. And he wants to use this. that and do everything he can to bridge the gap between himself and his Jewish audience. He wants to tell them about Jesus. So he addresses them in their native language Aramaic, and that was a really good way to start. So he established common ground that they share as a people group,

their faithfulness to their Jewish heritage. He starts off really well. He says, I am a Jew born in Tarsus and Solicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamayil. Now, they would have known that name really well. according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are to this day. See, Paul gave him his testimony then about how he had been so zealous for Judaism that he persecuted the early Christians to the point of death, having them found, delivering them to prison both men and women. And then on the road to Damascus, he encountered the risen Christ and was transformed. No longer was his zeal about his Jewish heritage and his tradition.

but about a person, a Jew, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Paul was so, so careful in his testimony. He was highlighting the role of his Jewish teachers. He was getting the crowd to trust him and listen to him. But there was one word when he got to it. It set off the crowd and it made it impossible for him to continue. What do you think it was? Gentiles.

It was the word Gentiles. See, when Paul told the crowd about, Jesus instructions and shared Jesus' words to quote, go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles. The crowd went berserk. They went from listening to having raised voices and shouting to saying, away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live. That's pretty extreme.

Gosh, those Gentiles, they must have threatened everything. They definitely didn't have the right membership card. So what's the deal? what's going on with these heirs? Well, it's actually a complex problem. There are several possibilities, but we're just going to talk about three today. First, for the Jewish crowd listening to Paul's testimony, when they brought up the word Gentiles, their self-identity was threatened.

Let me explain. See, their identity was bound up in food law, Sabbath, observance, and circumcision. These were ways they were set apart for God. Now, the Gentiles and their adoption into God's family didn't come. with these same sets of rules. The Gentiles were welcomed for a different reason, and it was strictly based on Jesus. So the Jewish listeners, well, they could continue to observe these practices, but they were not the way to be identified with God.

Their identity could only come through Jesus. That meant Jew or Gentile didn't matter. They were on equal terms with God because of Jesus. So observing Jewish customs didn't get them a leg up or a better membership. and this felt very threatening. Second, for those who kept a conservative Jewish tradition, their self-preservation was threatened. The strict and devout Jews would have embraced Paul's welcoming of the Gentiles

into the temple like a kettle of water on a gas fire. It was, in their view, an abomination to the strict codes of set apartness that God had established. Theirs was a heritage of separateness they wished to uphold for the generation to follow. If there was a way to honor and worship God that didn't first go through their guidelines, then they would lose their exclusivity. With that security blanket taken away, they would have to find their security elsewhere. Third, for those who were angry about the Gentiles, their overall pride was threatened. Being Jewish, it was something solid to stand on. There was history, tradition, birthright honor, and none of those things were bad, but

They were being misused to find their righteousness. They believed they were something in them that made them better suited to be God's people than others. Now, all of these things get recycled and repeated today in modern ways. We can view going to church like a punch card that keeps us on the right side of God's favor. We can tie our national identity to our Christian identity and domesticate God and his law. We can assume that the people who do things like us are Christian. and those who don't are not. The main point of Paul's message,

if they would just have let him get through it, was that being born Jewish was something to cherish. But before meeting Jesus, even though Paul was born Jewish, he was just as off base as the Gentiles with their non-biblical religion. Paul had been trying to establish righteousness on his own and was therefore rejecting salvation,

just like the Gentiles. It's a miracle. that you are following Jesus if you are. It's a miracle that I'm following Jesus, that Jesus keeps us following him. It's all a miracle. And when we slip into thinking that it's less than that, we need Jesus.

We need a personal relationship with him over everything else. In Psalm 84, the psalmist writes about a feeling of confidence that does not come from a distant, remote, formal, or impersonal God, but from a God that he is encountered as near, personal, loving, and merciful. It says, how lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty? My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord. My flesh and my heart cry out for the living God. Do you hear that?

He's like looking for her security somewhere. But listen to this next part. It's so cool. It says, even the sparrow has found a home and the swallow a nest for her. where she may have her young, a place near your altar. There's an immense amount of comfort that comes to us when we come near to Jesus. Instead of the threatening and security that comes from forgetting the membership card, we feel the constant warmth of being welcomed and invited into his kingdom. Have you resolved to build your confidence at his altar? Have you asked him

to give you the love and the grace to do that? Let's pray. Lord, even though my community with you and my closest with you waxes and wanes because of my effort, you are always the same. Please give me your grace to find my confidence and establish my foundation near your altar, and let me receive the security of knowing I am yours. Amen.