Here we are on the second day of the second week! We’re making progress and that is awesome. I hope that you are enjoying the reading of God’s word along with me and my church. It truly has been a blessing.
Today’s reading takes us out of the birth of the early church into some of the birth pangs of the early growth of the church. I found, again, that the reading just sped along and I was caught off guard when I got to the end of the reading section for today. I hope the experience is the same for you also.
Here are my thoughts on the reading for today.
Two things stuck out for me in today’s reading. The first was the almost other worldly empowerment of unlearned men, who after their empowerment shared boldly the truth about Jesus the Messiah and what He had done for them. The second is the great love of God for the whole world, not just the Jewish nation, but everyone else; and the implications for us today.
Stephen encapsulates the first element of my understanding of this section. His name means “victor’s crown” and as a victor he boldly tells the lawyers, religious leaders and religious elite, God’s story to mankind. Here was an untrained man, as far as we know, telling the trained leaders the Bible story. He does it with passion, energy, insight and finally great denunciation for his audience. They killed the King of glory, they rejected His witness of Himself and rejected the testimony of the scriptures about Him. Wow!
They didn’t like that at all and it cost Stephen his life…although it was the absolute truth.
The second element of my understanding of this section was the bridging of the chasm between the Jews and the rest of the world in Jesus. The truth that Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one of God and the Savior of the whole world is clear as clear can be. The Jewish believers at first can’t handle the truth that Jesus is for everyone (and isn’t that how it is when someone else gets invited to our party?), but reason prevails after evidence of the Holy Spirit’s movement in the Gentile believers.
What about all the schisms that we find now on the earth? It seems to me that we American believers sometimes tend to make the grace of God only available to those who are in our country legally, were not born under the influence of Islam or find themselves seemingly tied inextricably to their illicit habit of choice. We could find ourselves in the same “glorious” place as the the Jewish believers of that time.
I ask myself, “Do we really have the love of God for the whole world like God does?”
I hope you a have gotten in the habit now of reading everyday with me and my church. May God bless you today. Until tomorrow.
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