The Bible Recap - Day 323 (Acts 9-10) - Year 6

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Yesterday we met Saul, a powerful half-Roman, half-Jewish Pharisee in Jerusalem. Due in part to his violent acts against the disciples, most of them leave the city. Today he decides to hunt down anyone who belongs to the way, which is what they were calling the early church at that point, probably because of that time Jesus said he is the Way. Saul goes to the high priest to get legal permission to drag any Christ followers down and extradite them back to Jerusalem for punishment. They will not get away from him, or so he thinks. God has a different plan, one in which Saul can't get away

from him. As Saul heads north out of the city toward Damascus, which is in modern-day Syria, a holy lightning bolt, or something like that, knocks him to the ground. He and the guys with him all hear a voice from heaven but don't see anyone. The voice asks, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And Saul asks, who are you, Lord? First of all, this is such a great question. I wanna keep asking this question the rest of my life.

I wanna keep getting to know him more and more all the time. But there's also something interesting in the question Jesus asks. Jesus is in heaven at the right hand of the father. So how can Saul be persecuting him? In this question, Jesus makes it clear that he has united himself with the church. One of the images we see in scripture is that he is the head of the body, and the head is both aware and impacted when the body hurts.

As the church is persecuted, Jesus feels it. He is compassionate. He enters into the pain of his people. Jesus identifies himself to Saul and tells him to go into Damascus and keep listening for instructions. The whole experience leaves Saul temporarily blind, so he has to be guided. Meanwhile, God gives a vision to a local believer named Ananias and tells him where to find Saul. Ananias is probably like, you're telling me this so I can go kill him, right? But God is like, nope, still not the plan. There's one interesting thing in what Ananias says. In verse 13, he says,

Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. Aren't saints dead people? How is Saul harming dead people? Actually, scripture repeatedly identifies all believers as saints, dead or alive. Nice to meet you, I'm Saint Tara Lee. This idea isn't even exclusive to the New Testament.

We see it in the writings of David and Solomon, most notably Psalm 16. By the way, this doctrine is called the sainthood of the believer. We'll link to two articles with more info on this in the show notes. God continues explaining the plan to Ananias. He says, I've given Saul a vision of you. He's expecting you. Go pray for him to receive his sight. Why does God do this? Can't God just heal Saul's sight? Why give two visions and make Ananias put on sandals and walk to a stranger's house

and maybe even put his life at risk because this is Saul the persecutor? God wants his people to be engaged in his process. We get the joy of being part of the plan of his redemption. Ananias goes and prays. Saul regains his sight, is filled with the Spirit, and then he gets baptized and immediately starts declaring Jesus as Lord. His preaching causes such an uproar in the local synagogue that some of the local religious leaders plot to kill him.

What a tragedy that would have been. This man wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. Saul's followers save him from the plot, and it makes me wonder if they've become Christ's followers too. Saul leaves town and makes the week-long trip back to Jerusalem, but the disciples there are skeptical of him too, all except for Barnabas. Remember him? He's the one who sold his land and gave the money to the church in Acts 4.

He vouches for Saul, who begins preaching locally but then gets threats from others who aren't buying it, so the apostles send him back to his hometown of Tarsus so things can simmer down. It's about 350 miles north, in modern-day Turkey. Then we hit a verse that really interests me. Verse 31 says, 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. They're facing persecution and death threats, but even as those things are on the rise, the church experiences increasing peace, comfort, and fear of the Lord. They seem to be remembering what Jesus said. They're living out the peace and primary focus he kept trying to get them to focus on. If you were with us in the Old Testament, you may have expected them to forget quickly, like their forefathers did.

Moses would remind them a million times about something and they'd be like, yeah, we got it, we're totally on board. Then by the time the sun had set, they were off the rails. How are things so different now? This is the work of God the Spirit as he indwells believers. He is the difference maker. Not only do the disciples live in peace, but they also live in power.

Peter heals people and even raises a woman from the dead. And one day while Peter's praying on a roof waiting for lunch to start, he has a strange vision. A sheet comes down with all kinds of animals on it, and a voice tells him to kill and eat these animals. And he's like, say what? So God repeats it for him two more times because God knows Peter only works in threes. This vision has a meaning and a purpose. The meaning is that God is declaring all foods edible. Jesus did this in Mark 7 19, and God repeats it here. This can be confusing because it feels like God is saying some of the Old Testament laws don't matter. And if that's the

case, how do we know which ones to obey and which ones to disregard? This is a question a lot of you have, so I hope this will be helpful. God gave three types of laws in the Old Testament, civil, ceremonial, and moral. Civil laws form a stable society and lay out punishments for violations. These are horizontal man-to-man laws. Ceremonial laws are about what things are clean or unclean and other things that relate to the temple, which is about to be destroyed, by the way. Moral laws are where God declares things right or wrong

according to His unchanging standards. So again, civil, ceremonial, and moral. The civil laws apply to God's unique relationship with the nation-state of Israel, so those aren't applicable today. The ceremonial laws are no longer applicable because they apply to a temple that doesn't exist and a sacrifice that has been fulfilled. Jesus is our perfect sacrifice and His blood has purified us. But the moral laws, like the Ten Commandments,

remain intact. We'll link to an article with more info on this in the show notes. Peter is in the midst of the awkward transition phase of all this, and he resists what God is telling him. But it's important for him to get it because there's a greater purpose behind what God is telling him. And that purpose pertains to the guys who are about to knock on the front door. A Roman centurion named Cornelius had an angelic vision directing him to send servants to Peter, and as God's timing would have it, they arrive right after Peter has this vision. They ask him to come back to meet Cornelius, and he agrees. When they arrive, Cornelius falls down and worships him, and Peter is like,

Whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not God. Don't worship me. That's weird and wicked. Stand up. Cornelius has a packed house waiting for Peter, and Peter opens by addressing the elephant in the room. Tribalism. Historically, the Jews aren't supposed to associate

with foreigners, but Peter confesses that God has been teaching him some things, correcting his thinking. He now sees that there is no tribal divide in the family of God. There's tribal diversity, but not tribal division. All are welcome in the family of God. Peter preaches the gospel and everyone in the house believes. The Holy Spirit verifies their conversion. Then, after they've received the Spirit, they're baptized with water and ask Peter to stick around for

a few days, probably so he can keep teaching them more about the gospel. Today my God shout was the absolute sovereignty of God over the salvation of his people. Saul's story makes me so happy. It's such an encouragement to know that when God wants someone, they're his. If you have friends or family members that you've been praying for and sharing the gospel with

and they've rejected it or even been hostile toward you, you know how helpless and terrifying and heartbreaking that can feel. But God has the final word. And we see with Saul's story that a person doesn't even have to be pursuing God to find him. They can even be actively working out a rebellion against him.

That's what happened to C.S. Lewis, too. He set out to prove God did not exist and ended up being found by the very God he denied. There is hope for everyone. There is hope for everyone. There is hope for all your friends and family members who've rejected Christ. All of us who know God have been captured by the King of the Universe, adopted into his family, and caught up in the greatest redemption story the human heart has ever known. He's found us. And he's where the joy is.

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