Acts 6:1-7

In this post, we will just quickly touch on the main points we looked at, and explore some practical applications from that, even for us today. From Acts 6:1-7, we pretty much saw the centrality of Christ and Scripture and the principal place of the apostles in the Christian faith and church. We mentioned the extreme view that some have that there ought not to be any organization in the church and the opposite extreme of churches which seem to be centered on their organization (usually emphasizing programs as opposed to Christ and Scripture). Yet we saw how the church, the body of Christ (the Head), is like an organism; having structure and organization, yet dynamically adapting – responding to needs and the work that the Holy Spirit is already doing. We saw:

1. The Problem involving the Hellenists
We saw that the Hellenists (Jews who had adopted the Greek culture and language in their lives, as opposed to the more traditional, Aramaic-speaking Jews in Jerusalem) and how it had so happened that their widows were being overlooked in the distribution of aid.

2. The Proposal of the twelve
-Far from ignoring the problem, the twelve, gathered the disciples and gave a proposal that noted the priority of the word of God and prayer [for the body]
-The Twelve were apostles of Jesus Christ, which means that:
a) They were witnesses to the resurrection of Christ Jesus
b)They were appointed by Christ Jesus (c.f. Luke 6:14-16; Acts 1:24-26)
-It is also through the apostles that even we today have the Scriptures (at that time, there was the Old Testament, yet the words of Jesus were known by the disciples authoritatively through the apostles)

3. The Participation of the disciples
-The disciples participated in that the men to be chosen for the task were from amongst them, and the disciples themselves were choosing men that evidenced the qualities proposed.
-Notice the importance placed on the task, even though it was not the ministry of the word of God or prayer. The men to handle the task had to be of good reputation, full of the Spirit (i.e. yielded to Him), and full of wisdom.
-The Holy Spirit was seen leading all areas of church life, and each served as each was gifted by God
[ponder – are you a disciple of Christ Jesus? Are you part of a local church? Do you do the important work of serving along with others in your church? When you have a challenge/problem (personal or corporate), what kind of people do you approach in your church as you face the problem? By God’s grace, are you cultivating qualities of godliness in your own life?]

4. The Propagation of the word of God
-With the right priorities – centered on Christ and Scripture – and meeting the needs of the body of believers, the church kept on effectively spreading the word of God in Jerusalem
-Even many priests, who had witnessed the false religion prevalent in the land as they served in the temple (c.f. Luke 20:45-47), became obedient to the faith…seeing true religion – faith articulated and lived out.
[ponder – have you been obedient to the gospel call to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Does your life reflect pure and undefiled religion (privately and publically), c.f. James 1:27?]

Last week we took a look at the second attempt of the Sanhedrin to squelch the new church. The Sadducees arrested all the apostles, who were promptly freed from prison by an angel. The high priests turned a blind eye to the miraculous occurring under their nose, and go forward with the trial.

When Peter and the apostles make them look foolish, and call for their repentance (rather than submitting to the high priests' orders to quit preaching), the Sanhedrin as a whole wants to kill the apostles!

Instead, the pragmatic advice of Gamaliel convinces the Sanhedrin to release the apostles, since they didn't believe in the supernatural, and in their experience 'upstarts' like these tended to die out once the leader had been killed.

The apostles were flogged and released, and went out rejoicing! Why? Because they had been deemed worthy to bear the shame for the sake of Jesus.

Remember how Jesus was scourged before the crucifixion? This is the same thing.

How do you react when the Bible confronts your sin? Are you angry? Rebellious? Or do you repent and rejoice at what God has done for you, then obey, like Peter says?

How do you think about persecution? Are you joyful, even through the pain, at the thought that some day you will rejoice in full glory with Christ?

Impossible Memories, Part 3

Main Session 1 – Timothy Nash

For our first session, we focused on Matthew 19:16-26, the story of ‘The Rich Young Ruler’. Yet, in introduction, Tim referred to Genesis 1:31; 6:5; 8:21 to demonstrate how God created and it was very good, yet with the fall there was sin and it tainted (and this is still the case) everything. We saw sin as the #1 killer in the world! Again, this came to be from the fall (Genesis 3).

Now, since there is this pervasive problem [of sin], we continued to look to the word of God, to our focal passage for the session, to see the correct diagnosis from the Great Physician. There were six key lessons we learned:

1. Devotion to religion cannot cure sin
The rich young ruler was a ruler in the synagogue (oversaw concerns of the synagogue; elected by the elders), thus he had high status socially, religiously, etc. Yet he recognized that he did not have eternal life

2. The wisdom of man cannot cure sin
The ruler approached Jesus just as though He were a mere teacher, probably regarding him as a very wise man. He did not acknowledge the Lord’s deity. In any case, Jesus basically told him to look to the word of God

3. External morality cannot cure sin
The rich young ruler claimed to have lived a moral life, claiming to have kept the commandments of the Law (yet, as in the first lesson, he recognized that he did not have eternal life). We referred to Galatians 3:19ff and explored the question, “Why was the Law given?” Do you remember how there is what is called a 2nd-class condition in verse 21? It’s like a rhetorical statement, not suggesting that it is possible for the law to impart life, but actually precluding such a thought. Quite a concept to chew on.

4. A slave of sin does not want his sin to be cured
Very clear, as far as I can see. Anyone have/need more notes on this?*

5. No one person is more easily cured than another
We are all tainted, and "evil-evil-evil-evil" (just quoting Tim) – in our natural state, nothing has changed since Genesis 3 (c.f. Genesis 6:5). Think Total Depravity!

6. But with God all things are possible
Saving sinners is just a part of it, but only God can do it.

This gave a good representation of what Impossible was all about. Tim mentioned how, in the next main session, we would explore the question, “What does it look like when God cures sin?”

Impossible Memories, Part 2

Just in case you can’t remember, Impossible went on from Friday, September 26 to Saturday, September 27, 2008 (evening to evening). This was at Delaware Outdoor Adventure Center (DOAC). Yet before we actually got there, we had to meet up at the Bishop’s Corner McDonald’s parking lot at ~5pm*. There were three vehicles leaving from there: the Big Van (driven by Danny); Tim’s car; Tim’s car…yes, that’s 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy. I particularly remember this because, sadly, I did not bring my car and so we all had to pile into the available vehicles…well, yet another memory :).

The other thing I remember from the trip is that we didn’t get lost this time!...all three vehicles. I was in 1 Timothy’s car, and of course he was driving, and Eric was riding shotgun/navigator, and we had a lot of stuff in the car (I think I was underneath a guitar, among other things). In any case, which vehicle were you in and how was the trip?*

We did arrive in good time…around the same time as Mrs. Thomas (whose presence and help we appreciate) and Shelby arrived. With all vehicles and individuals there, we quickly went to unpacking and bringing bags to the ladies and gentlemen’s quarters.

Sealing the rectangular opening in the dividing wall

Of course, it was interesting and funny to find a big rectangular hole in the wall between the two quarters. Anyway, thankfully one of the people from DOAC closed it after the introduction to the place, rules and people.

These introductions happened in the ‘main building’, where there is the big room that is adjacent to the kitchen. There, we were served and enjoyed meals (spiritual and physical), enjoyed game and chill time, etc.

Introductions in main building (do not miss the dog near the left edge :))

By spiritual meal(s) (c.f. Matthew 4:4 :)), I refer to the main teaching sessions, and this time we had 2 Timothy (Tim Nash) teaching, and if I remember correctly*, the ladies also had their devotional and break-out sessions in there too, on Saturday. And of course, we had the physical meals for physical nourishment, prepared and served by the DOAC people. You know, “DOAC people” just doesn’t seem to represent the “DOAC people” well, especially considering their welcoming kindness and diligence to make sure all was well for us. Does anyone remember [any of] their names?* Does anyone remember the dog’s name?*

Anyway, the “DOAC people” seem to always have an interesting way of having us partake of the meals in an orderly fashion [without crowding the ‘buffet’ table :)]. I think that night, they had first-timers to DOAC go first. Does anyone remember if this was so?*

Orderly fashion for physical meals

Of course, they have an orderly system in place to help us have non-turbulent flow of traffic when going to get drinks and also when bringing the dishes in for cleaning after the meal. I believe there are three doors, and the ones for entrance [to the kitchen area] are the left (to drinks) and right (dirty dishes) ones, and the middle one is the exit one. Is my memory accurate?* There is a step at each of the doors, and they are clearly marked with yellow paint…so the “DOAC people” seem to always remind us. They seem to remember some people tripping over those from our group – does anyone remember anyone tripping on any one of those?* (I haven’t seen anyone trip, but I’ve heard…and as I write this post I will try not to write too many names…that’s like writing “Karryn” for example – a name randomly selected from a predefined thought pattern :)…I wouldn’t do that)

Alright…moving along to the rest of the evening: we joined together for some musical worship, and then had our first spiritual meal…the memory of which will be expressed in the next part…

Impossible Memories, Part 1

Do you think you could search/scan your memory and find material relating to the Impossible Youth Conference that we had last Fall (2008)? Is that impossible? Well, we’ll find out.

With this series of posts (much like ‘Pondering Proclaim’ for Proclaim), I am actually going to attempt to help bring back to memory some aspects of Impossible that you might have forgotten and might appreciate remembering. So, you could take ‘Impossible Memories’ to connote that we are remembering things that are impossible, or that the actual remembering of what transpired at Impossible is impossible. We’ll see. We could probably apply either one of those selectively to certain parts of the series and it will be beneficial :).

Yet, why am I saying “we”? Well, I would appreciate your help in this memory attempt. I’ll give as much detail as I remember (or choose to remember :)), and you can fill in the things that I might have forgotten…or that you remember differently (as in, I might have actually erred in my memory). I actually will have an asterisk (*) in the particular instances that I really would like to hear from you and/or need help. Any other commenting would be greatly appreciated…just remember Ephesians 4:29…we just have the ‘typing’ mode as opposed to the ‘speaking’ mode in terms of ‘word proceed from your mouth’ :).

Well, I hope and pray that all this will be enjoyable, beneficial and Christ-honoring (c.f. Colossians 3:17)

Acts 4:32-5:16

Welcome back WonbyOne! Happy New Year! Hope everybody had an awesome holiday with their families, and is now ready to get back into some fun games, glorious worship and serious Bible exposition. I know I am!!! =)

Okay, so our text was 4:32-5:16. Go ahead and read it again, and become familiar with the text.
Friday night we broke the text up into three headings:
-The product of the Paraklete (comforter or encourager)/Holy Spirit (4:32-37)
-The piety of the pretenders (5:1-11)
-The perseverance of the possession (5:12-16)

1)The product of the Holy Spirit

Remember to look at 5:11, and notice that this is the first time in the book of Acts that this group of now over 5000 people is identified as the church (though it has been the church since the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, 2:1-4).
What is the product of the Paraklete (The Holy Spirit)? We started in James 2:14-17, and then got into John 3:9-10, 11-18 and 4:7-8. The product is none other than love. Christians love because God loves, and His children increasingly demonstrate His nature, as God, by His grace, sanctifies (sets apart from sin) His children.

2) The piety of the pretenders

Remember that “lie” in 5:3 can be translated “falsify”. Falsify means that they’re faking. So, to falsify the Holy Spirit, means to fake His presence in your life, through empty loveless religion. We identified this action as “hypocrisy”. Read Matt 6:1-18 to get a clearer understanding of hypocrisy. Ananias and Sapphira’s “gift” was not given in love, demonstrated by their “keeping back” some of the profit from the sale of their property (v3). In keeping back some of the profit, they actually stole (much better translation of “keep back” in v3) from the church; obviously not an act of love (Rom 13:8-9).
God’s hatred of hypocrisy is clearly demonstrated in His immediate judgment of both Ananias and his wife. We took a little bit of time to get a biblical foundation for God’s hatred of hypocrisy. Texts that teach this include but are not limited to (there are many more) Amos 5:21-24, Isa 1:11-17, 65:3-5 and Matt 23:1-36.

3) The perseverance of the possession

Christ identifies the church as being His possession in Matt 16:18. He promises that nothing will keep Him from building His church! =) Salvation has always been and will always be a work of grace! Even though the horrifying event of Ananias and Sapphira’s death caused many people to be afraid to even associate with the believers (5:13), Christ was still building His church, and those whom God called to Himself were being saved (5:14-15).

Hello I´m back. Icould not post this picture. Reid, since I do not have an import license, I hope pictures suffice:

See u all next Sunday, Lord willing.