Element Church Insider

Hey Element Church!  This is day 17 of our One Prayer challenge.  Today our prayer is “Lord, make us creative”.  Please lift up the churches that are on the calendar in prayer as well today.  Our Bible reading is from Acts 17.  You can read it online HERE.  Here are my thoughts:

Acts 17:1-4 — Paul again used the Scriptures they knew, to reveal to them their Messiah.  EVERYTHING in the Old Testament pointed to Jesus.  It is so sad to me that the majority of the Jewish people, WHO HAD ALL THE SIGNS, missed seeing Jesus as the Messiah.  Why did they miss it?  Because Jesus didn’t come as the person THEY wanted.  Folks, we don’t get to pick what kind of Jesus we get.  We get Jesus as we NEED Him not as we WANT Him.  If we don’t take Jesus as He is, we don’t get Jesus.

Acts 17:5-9 —  How many times do we see this in Acts.  It doesn’t say the other Jews were upset at their heretical teaching.  It doesn’t say they were concerned they were leading other people astray.  Nor does it say that they wanted to show the Apostles or these new believers their errors so they could save them.  They were what?  JEALOUS!!  Jealous that people were going to Paul’s church and not theirs.  Jealous that the the Christian church was growing and theirs wasn’t.  Jealous of the attention Paul and Silas were receiving.  We need to be VERY careful that we don’t develop those same attitudes.  Jealousy can so easily creep into and grip our hearts toward other churches, pastors and Christians.

Acts 17:10-12  — The Berean church needs to be a model for us in how we accept teaching.  They listened eagerly and then searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth.  We need to be careful not to just accept anything our pastor tells us.  (Yes, even me)  We must examine the Scripture and find out if what they say is true or not.  People can be so easily led astray by just accepting a Pastors word.  YES, there needs to be some trust of your pastor.  YES, you should expect your pastor to have studied and examined the Scripture himself.  But most definitely YES we need to be examining it ourselves.  Testing the words of our leaders.  Seeking God’s Truth in Scripture.

Acts 17:16-31 — Paul uses the culture to teach the Truth.  He’s being relevant.  I know some will disagree and that’s ok.  Paul used an actual god named “the unknown god” that the people of Athens worshiped to reveal to them Jesus Christ.  The Athenians didn’t want to miss the “right” God so they made an idol to the unknown god just in case all their other gods weren’t the right ones.  Paul says, “This God whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.”

**BIG NOTE** This just hit me.  Paul did NOT say “And God counts this to you as righteousness.”  He THEN tells them to repent of your sins and turn to God.  Worshiping a god hoping it’s the right one does not get you to Heaven.  JESUS does and repenting of your sins and turning to HIM.  There has been much debate lately about the “all gods get us to Heaven” argument.  THERE IS NO ARGUMENT.  IT IS JESUS ONLY!  **BIG NOTE OVER**

Then Paul uses more “pop culture” to be relevant in presenting the Gospel.  He quotes some popular poets of the Athenians.  He used what THEY KNEW to reveal the TRUTH of God’s Word.  There is nothing wrong with taking what our culture knows to reveal to them God.  NOTHING!  We absolutely must be careful that we don’t replace Scripture with pop culture, but why wouldn’t we leverage what is in our world to be used redemptively.  What is meant for evil can be used to redeem.

Acts 17:32-33 — Regardless of how relevant you are, some people are not going to accept Jesus.  But if Paul would not have leveraged the culture like he did, I don’t think you’d have seen the shift in attitudes from v. 18 when they called him a babbler, to v. 32 when some of those same men said “we want to hear more”.

Learning,

Jeff