The Bible Recap - Day 321 (Acts 4-6) - Year 5

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Yesterday the early church had its launch party. God the Spirit came to dwell in believers, continuing the process of redemption God planned and set in motion before He even created the world. While Jesus can only be in one place at a time, and He's currently seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, God the Spirit isn't bound by a body. He is dispersed to all believers.

But even in this dispersion, it's for the sake of unity. He demonstrated that by unifying a divided language, by bringing clarity and understanding that wasn't there without Him. Then Peter and John healed a man who was 40 plus years old who had been crippled for his entire life, then took that opportunity to preach the gospel again. And today we see Peter encountering some pushback from the local religious authorities as he preaches his second sermon. Instead of making things so much better, the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus has heightened the local tensions and the oppression of His followers. On earth, it has made things worse for them. Peter and a few others are preaching and get thrown in jail for it. But they don't even

seem to care about that as far as we can tell. They don't silence the message of hope and redemption. They turn it up to eleven. And as a result, about five thousand more people repent and follow Jesus. The local leaders have a meeting about this because they're concerned about what these followers of Jesus are doing and how. When they ask Peter and John where they got their power and authority, Peter says, Jesus, the guy you killed. There's no other place to get that power. There's no other name by which people are saved. The leaders are thrown off by this whole thing.

They've got two uneducated men who somehow speak with wisdom and authority, and they've got a lame guy who can now walk. And all three of them say that Jesus, who has mysteriously disappeared, is the one responsible for it all. What do you do in this kind of trial? The witnesses all have the same story, but the defendant is nowhere to be found. So they let them go, but tell them to knock it off with all the Jesus talk. And Peter says, yeah, that's not going to happen.

When they go back to meet with the other disciples, they actually pray to be more bold. This is an incredible response to oppression and pain. They only want relief from persecution, not for the sake of comfort and ease, but in order to preach the gospel more. And in verse 31, God in order to preach the gospel more. And in verse 31, God says yes to that prayer. It says they continued to speak the word of God with boldness through the work of the Spirit.

Trials have a way of highlighting what really matters, and this one narrows their focus to two things, spreading the gospel and taking care of each other. The early church exists under such an oppressive Roman regime that some of the Christ followers can't provide for themselves, so the others pick up the slack. A guy named Barnabas sells some of his land so the apostles can use the money to provide for needy church members.

Then a couple named Ananias and Sapphira decide they want to look as generous as Barnabas. This sounds like the Pharisees, doesn't it? Doing things for the purpose of being seen? It smells a lot like a whitewashed tomb. They sell a piece of land too, but only give part of the money to the church and act like they gave all of it. The Spirit gives Peter discernment and seems to tip him off to what's happening.

He says if they hadn't sold the field at all, or even if they'd kept all the money, there'd be no problem. They're free to do whatever they want with their stuff. But they're not free to lie to God. In selling the field and faking their generosity, their hearts are revealed. When Peter pathetically questions Ananias about this, he falls over dead. When his wife comes home and repeats the lie, Peter prophesies that she'll die too, and she does, immediately. It's important to point out a few things here. First, Peter isn't commanding their death, he's communicating their death.

This whole section is bracketed by the activity of the Spirit. God seems to be relaying bad news to Peter and he's just the messenger. Second, I always like to point out that as sinners, death and judgment is what we all deserve. So what happens to them is not unfair. They're getting what they deserve and they're even getting what we deserve. But in God's great mercy, we've been spared. And that is the only unfair thing. Third, the text doesn't tell us if these are true believers or not, so we don't know

anything about their eternal destinations. But that's not the point of this text anyway. While outsiders are really intrigued by everything they see happening with these Christ followers, they also seem to have a little bit of fear about it all. They want in on the healings and probably the whole community feel of it, but they probably fear the same kind of judgment that happened to Ananias and Sapphira.

People keep dipping their toes in though, testing things out. There's apparently even a local rumor that even Peter's shadow can heal people, but the text never confirms or denies that. As the preaching and healing continues, the local authorities grow jealous of them, probably jealous of their power and fearlessness and even their community, and they arrest them again.

But God vetoes that move by sending an angel to unlock the doors. I love this. An angel set them free to do what got them imprisoned in the first place. So they go back to the temple and start talking about Jesus again. Meanwhile, the authorities are like, hey, go get those guys out of their cell and bring them to us. But oopsie, they're nowhere to be found. Then somebody tips the authorities off and they bring the disciples in again.

Peter and the apostles don't back off from their message, and the religious leaders realize that their message makes them look really bad to the locals. If the message of Jesus is true and they killed him, that's a bit of a scandal. But a Pharisee named Gamalil says, listen, we've seen this before with two other guys, remember? We don't need to worry about it. It'll blow over.

And if it doesn't blow over, well, then we might want to start paying attention, because it's obviously true. I'm assuming 2,000 years is plenty of time for it to blow over, and here we still are. The leaders beat the apostles, then send them home. And Luke says they rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer for the gospel. Wow.

And they keep teaching people about Jesus. As the church grows and continues to cross cultural divides, these new young leaders have to learn some hard lessons about how to work for unity in the midst of diversity. The Hellenists are apparently a minority group in the church. They're Jews who moved away from Jerusalem and moved back speaking Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic like the locals. They say their widows aren't being taken care of like everyone else. The apostles take their claim seriously and work to find a solution that allows them

to still focus on their priority, preaching the gospel. They called the whole church in and said, "'This is important, so we need to delegate it "'to some of you because we don't have time "'to personally meet all the needs of the church. "'We want the church to meet the needs of the church. "'So choose seven wise, godly men "'to be in charge of making sure these widows are fed.

One of the men they appoint is a guy named Stephen. He's the first person Scripture records besides Jesus and the apostles, who can do signs and wonders. So he's serving the church, preaching the gospel, and doing some miracles. It all seems to be going great until he encounters some Jews from a synagogue that does not appear to believe Jesus is the Messiah. Stephen apparently fills them in on Christ's prophecies about the temple being destroyed and about Jesus being the fulfillment of the law, and they twist his words in a false testimony

against him in a trial before the council. But as the council looks at him, he's apparently got that same kind of radiance that angels have when they appear on earth, and like Moses did when he came down from the mountain. It's the radiance that comes from being in the presence of God. My God shot was in Peter's conversation with the religious authorities in 412 when he says, There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. First of all, we've talked about this before in regards to prayer,

but the name of Jesus isn't actually what Peter is placing emphasis on here. In Jewish culture, your name is a shorthand way of summarizing you as a person, your character, your will. Saving power isn't in the word Jesus, it's in the person of Jesus. After all, lots of people are named Jesus. The power isn't in the name, it's in the person. So Peter's statement is more like,

there is no other person who can save you except for Jesus. He's showing them how specific the gospel is. One of the common accusations people make toward Christianity is that it's exclusive. But the gospel of Christ isn't exclusive. It's just specific. He's our only hope for salvation. He's where the rescue is, and He's where the joy is.

The holiday season is always a good time to remember how important family is. And family isn't just who you share a name or DNA with. It's way more than that. And I really love my TBR family, the team of people who work day in and day out to make the Bible recap happen for all of us. Who are we? Let me tell you. It's me, Tara Lee.

I research, write, and record TBR. Olivia Lee is my executive assistant. Laura Buschelt is our project manager. Allison King is our sound engineer. Lindsay Herring is our video editor. Sarah Okum and her crew comprise our social media team. Omar Cardenas and Arlette Blackwell manage La Synopsis de la Biblia. And Bonnie Hartwig is our director for the Bible Recap.

I'm super thankful for these people today and always. There's a brand new Christmas podcast called Scrooge, a Christmas Carol podcast. And Sean Astin from Lord of the Rings voices the Scrooge character. This version has been revamped to point people to the hope that's found in Jesus instead of to the consumerism of Christmas. To check it out, text SCROOGE to 67101 or click the link in the show notes.