Spiritcode

GALILEE OF THE GENTILES

Galilee of the Gentiles   

Isaiah prophesied around 720 BC about a time and a place where great light would confront great darkness (Isaiah 9:1). The great light that he writes about occurred with the birth of Jesus, the first Christmas almost two thousand years ago, and the place was in the Middle east in a region called Galilee of the Gentiles, where the darkness of the tyranny of the Roman empire had overcome and subsumed all nations and cultures that opposed it. 
There is a phrase spoken with a political emphasis today about the river to the sea which is totally unlike the meaning of when it was first mentioned in the Bible about a land between the River to the Sea and I’m now reading that Scripture. 
Isaiah 9:1 But the former times of darkness and despair in the land of Zebulon and Naphtali called Galilee of the Gentiles, where lies the way from the Jordan River to the sea, will one day be filled with glory. The people who walk in darkness will see a great light and for those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine.
There is a direct line that passes through the land of Zebulon and Naphtali, in Northern Israel from the Jordan River to the seaport harbour at Haifa. In the year 1947, 4,500 Jewish illegal immigrant refugees from Europe landed in Haifa on board the ship ’The Exodus’. They were sent back for a short time by the British to detention camps in Germany but then in 1948 because of worldwide public sentiment they were allowed back to Haifa where the Jewish population had grown through legal migration over many years to 84,000 so that the population of Haifa had become 66% Jewish.  

In the time of Jesus Galilee of the Gentiles was a place where religious darkness and idolatry opposed the then one true religion called Judaism, where even Judaism itself was opposing itself from within, through doctrines of decaying legalism and hypocrisy and pride. Galilee of the Gentiles was the battlefield of good against evil and of light against darkness, but it was to become the wellspring of life out of death. 

Jesus, the light of the world of the first Christmas grew up in Galilee of the Gentiles, in the tribal territory of Zebulon and Naphtali and lived there in the towns of Nazareth and Capernaum. And that way from the river to the sea was a busy international trade route interspersed with Roman military garrisons that would have greatly influenced the social and cultural atmosphere in which Jesus lived and where he began his ministry to bring the Kingdom of God into the earth. 

In fact, much of what Jesus did in his life and ministry was in Zebulun and Naphtali, in Galilee of the Gentiles. He announced his ministry in Nazareth in Zebulun when he said ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted (Luke 4) and he turned water into wine, his first miracle, in the town of Cana in Naphtali, and he taught the Sermon on the Mount, his first public sermon, in Naphtali (Matthew 5) where he also appointed most of his apostles. He performed a multitude of miracles in the region of Capernaum and a great light did shine along that way from the river to the sea. 
He would finally go to Jerusalem where he was destined to die for all mankind and rise again from the dead, and where he is destined to return at the end of the age where he will overcome the final rebellious assault of great darkness against the power of his kingdom of great light. Isaiah’s prophecy would find its future fulfillment through Jesus the King of Kings that has fought and won the battle for our souls.

Isaiah 9:3 You will gather (raba) the nation of Israel, and its people will rejoice. They will rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest and like warriors dividing the plunder.
4-5 For you will break their yoke of slavery and the oppressor’s rod of power and lift the heavy burden from their shoulders.

6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The government will be upon his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David forever more. The dedication of the LORD of hosts will do this.

Over two thousand years on from that first Christmas we see in even greater measure a world that is in great darkness waiting for a great light. The odd paradox is that the world celebrates Christmas as a festive holiday season each year while not understanding the miraculous significance of that great light and not understanding the significant events of great darkness that are happening around about us. The great darkness that now awaits a great light has become a sign that a caring God who wants only the best for his people is waiting to act on behalf of his people. And those people who know their God will also be his signs of hope in today’s world, and when our lives exhibit that kind of hope people will want to know why you have such a hope – and you will have an answer. (1Peter 3:15). 

Outer darkness is the manifestation of disorder and corruption and violence which is being seen at the present moment on the ground in Israel, where malevolence and terrorism has reached a fever pitch of destructive power against the nation of Israel, and where hatred of Jews is being stirred up in certain parts of the media and politics. 
Malevolence and destructive political activism has been increasing in the world in recent years where groups and individuals contend with each other in power struggles to dominate and do harm to others. This outer darkness is a direct result of inner darkness which is described in the Bible as the work of the ‘god of this world’, the prince of the power of the world of darkness who uses deception to blind people’s minds from receiving the revelation of a loving and forgiving God in Jesus Christ. 

The Christmas story is a message of God’s intervention of his great light into both the outer darkness and into the inner darkness of people’s lives, so that they can see the things that are there as they truly are. At the present time God is bringing many things to the surface that have been hidden but are now being exposed so that they can be justly dealt with.

We saw in the prophetic Scripture from Isaiah that Jesus would be called the Prince of Peace, and that the government would be upon his shoulders. Jesus is showing himself in this way at this time in the world as he reorders our lives even in the midst of upheaval and loss and gives us his peace. Only he knows what things lay ahead as he determines the course of history and determines each day of our lives for us as we become drawn into his perfect will for us. I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 

And Jesus spoke of two different kinds of peace, the peace of God and the peace of the world. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. John 14:27 
The peace of the world is not an inner lasting peace, but it is more like a short-term relief that a person feels because they have trust in their own skills and experience and financial reserves to control the circumstances in their world. These resources are effective against many threats and obstacles and hazards, but when the threats and obstacles and hazards overcome their resources, their peace is gone. 
The peace of the world is also the one-upmanship of having the upper hand against rival opposition when it comes against us. This is seen blatantly in the fragile peace of global politics and national security with strategic alliances that are negotiated. And history tells us that worldly alliances don’t last forever – they are short-lived and fragile like the peace of the world.

The peace that God gives us is not fragile as we trust in the alliance of ‘God with us’ in all things so that we never have to just depend upon our own strategies and resources in order to feel safe and secure. Commit your way to the LORD; trust only in him, and he will act.
(Psalm 37:5) God is always acting on our behalf in the world of the unseen, and that is the essence of our faith. That is the source of our peace.

We are not saved from facing the struggles and the adversity, but we are saved from having our souls being defeated and made to feel hopeless. That is what being saved is. He has overcome the world’s power to crush our souls. We are given grace to receive his peace and to administer that peace and good will to others, to be the Gospel of peace in a broken world. You were created to be ‘good news’ in different ways and at different times to different people by the grace that God has already made ready for you to step into.

Isaiah 26:12 – Lord, You will establish peace for us, For You have also done all our works in us (done = ordained – devised a plan). In other words, God has ordained, before the day starts for you, those times and places where God will meet you in your challenge and you will receive his peace and pass it on and it will be displayed in you as the good news of peace, the Gospel of peace, of the God of peace. Amen

 

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

YOU ARE NOT ALONE
We begin reading in Acts Chapter twenty-seven 
Acts 27:1 Paul finally leaves Caesarea and starts his voyage of some two thousand seven hundred kilometres to Rome, along with Luke and another Christian named Aristarchus, and other prisoners, all in the custody of a Roman imperial guard named Julius. After battling headwinds, they landed at Smyrna on the coast of Turkey, and from there they sailed for Italy. Again they struck heavy winds along the southern coast of Crete, finally arriving at Fair Havens and staying there for several days, and Paul spoke to the ship’s officers about the weather being dangerous for long voyages and told them he believed there would be trouble ahead if they went on - perhaps shipwreck, loss of cargo, injuries, and death. 
But the officers in charge of the prisoners took advice from the ship’s captain and the owner to go further up the coast to a safe harbour called Phoenix for the winter. Then a light wind began blowing from the south so they decided to sail along close to shore, but abruptly the weather changed and a heavy wind of typhoon strength (a “northeaster,”) caught the ship and blew it out to sea. They tried to face back to shore but couldn’t, so they gave up and let the ship run before the storm, and sailed behind a small island, and hoisted aboard the lifeboat that was being towed behind them, binding the ship with ropes to strengthen the hull. 
The next day as the seas grew higher, the crew began throwing the cargo overboard, all the tackle and anything else they could lay their hands on, but the terrible storm raged on, until at last all hope was gone, but finally Paul called the crew together and said, ‘Men, you should have listened to me in the first place and not left Fair Havens—you would have avoided all this injury and loss! But cheer up! Not one of us will lose our lives, even though the ship will go down, for last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul, for you will surely stand trial before Caesar! What’s more, God has granted your request and will save the lives of all those sailing with you.’ So take courage! For I believe God! It will be just as he said! But we will be shipwrecked on an island.”
The storm hurled them along for two weeks on the Adriatic Sea, and they were convinced they would soon be driven ashore; and dashed upon the rocks along the coast, so they threw out four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight. Some of the sailors planned to abandon the ship and lower the lifeboat but Paul told the soldiers and crew that they would all die unless everyone stayed aboard. So the soldiers cut the ropes and let the lifeboat fall off. Paul begged everyone to eat. “You haven’t touched food for two weeks,” he said. “Please eat something now for your own good! For not a hair of your heads shall perish!” Paul took some hard baked bread loaf and gave thanks to God before them all and ate a piece of it. Suddenly their spirits lifted and they began eating, prisoners and soldiers and crew, all 276 of them, and they lightened the ship further by throwing the entire wheat cargo overboard.
When it was day, they didn’t recognize the coastline, but noticed a bay with a beach, and cutting off the anchors and leaving them in the sea, they lowered the rudders and raised the foresail but the ship hit a sandbar and ran aground and began to break apart.
The soldiers advised their commanding officer to let them kill the prisoners lest any of them swim ashore and escape. But Julius wanted to spare Paul, so he told them no. Then he ordered them all to jump overboard and make for land, some swimming and some clinging to planks and debris from the broken ship, and everyone escaped safely ashore!

They soon learned that they were on the island of Malta, and the people of the island were very kind to them, building a bonfire on the beach to welcome and warm them all in the rain and cold. But as Paul gathered an armful of sticks to lay on the fire, a poisonous snake, driven out by the heat, latched onto his hand, and when the people of the island saw it hanging there, they said to each other that Paul must have been a murderer who may have escaped drowning in the sea,but justice would not permit him to live!
But Paul shook off the snake into the fire and was unharmed, and all the people waited for him to begin swelling or suddenly fall dead, but when after a long time no harm came to him, they changed their minds and decided he was a god.

Publius, the governor of the island lived on a large estate and welcomed everyone to stay on the property and kindly fed them all for three days. Publius’s father had become ill with fever and a severe stomach ailment, so Paul went in and prayed for him, and laid hands on him, and the man was healed, then all the other sick people in the island came and received healing. And three months after the shipwreck when the time came to sail, people gave them gifts and provisions for their voyage. They were able to sail on to Rome on an Alexandrian ship called the ‘Twin Brothers’ which had wintered at the island.

When they disembarked at Puteoli in Italy, with Paul still under guard, they found some Christians, and stayed with them for seven days and then on the way to Rome Paul and his companions met more Christians at the Forum on the Appian Way, where he prayed with them and gave thanks to God. Paul then went on into Rome and when he arrived, he was permitted to live wherever he wanted to, but still under house arrest. Then three days after his arrival, he called together the local Jewish leaders and spoke to them and told them about the charges that The Jewish leaders accused him of in Caesarea, and of his defence and his innocence and also that he had appealed to Caesar.

Paul went on to tell them that it was because he believed that the Messiah Jesus had come that he was still under guard as a prisoner. They replied to Paul that they hadn’t heard any reports about him from those arriving from Jerusalem, nor had they received any letters from Judea. They said that they simply wanted to hear what he believed, and that the only thing they knew about these Christians was that they are being denounced everywhere! So Paul invited them to come to his house and they came in large numbers and he spoke to them all day and into the night about the Kingdom of God. He taught them about Jesus from the Scriptures, from the books of Moses and the books of the prophets, and there were many arguments, and only some believed. 

Paul finally ended his meetings with them by quoting Isaiah. 
‘Say to the Jews, “You will hear and see but not understand, for your hearts are too hard and your ears don’t listen and you have closed your eyes against understanding, for you don’t want to see and hear and understand and turn to me to heal you.’ (Isaiah 6:9)
And he told them that this salvation from God was available to the Gentiles too, and they would accept it. Paul lived for the next two years under guard in his rented house and welcomed all who visited him, telling them with all boldness about the Kingdom of God and about the Lord Jesus Christ; and no one tried to stop him, and later on during his time in Rome Paul wrote the second letter to Timothy in Ephesus and told him he was ready to go and be with the Lord.

2Timothy 4:6 I am prepared for my lifeblood to be poured out, and the time of being loosed from this life is close. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith, and finally, the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the right and true Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have lovingly desired to see him.

What is the crown of righteousness and how was Paul able to receive that crown?
Righteousness means living in spiritual uprightness and truth before God.
He tells us that after fighting a good fight against spiritual darkness, and finishing the race with endurance, he had to keep the faith. and to do this he had to look to Jesus who is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).
And he tells us that we all are included - each in our own circumstances and each in our own spiritual struggles to receive our crowns also. He sums it up as being a spiritual struggle of faith because he knew that none of us could gain that spiritual uprightnes through our own works.
Not having my own righteousness, which is from my ability to perfectly obey the law, but the righteousness which is from God through faith in Christ.

All his religious life he had wanted to be spiritually upright, but in his natural human spirit he had always failed or fallen short, until when he experienced the power of the Spirit of the life of Christ within him – he saw he wasn’t alone in this struggle - he saw his only spiritual struggle was trusting in the Holy Spirit to change his heart. And he encourages us that we are not alone in this either, and that our only spiritual struggle is trusting in God to change our hearts so that we would desire to let the works of God flow through us. The Bible tells us what that work of spiritual uprightness and truth brings about in us … ‘the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness is quietness and assurance for ever’ (Isaiah 32:17).

The peace is within us – it doesn’t come from the circumstances, otherwise we could never have peace - we would always feel stranded and unsure and alone, but he tells us we will never feel alone and stranded. The crown of peace upon our head means that just by thinking of his nearness we have that quietness and assurance that he is near. Jesus said to us In Me you will have peace, but in the world you will have trouble. I have overcome the world - so be glad and joyful. ( John 16:33). His overcoming puts the world’s power underneath us.  The world destroys peace among mankind and seeks the world’s power to overcome and put down all obstacles, but nothing that the world does to destroy peace can take the peace and assurance from our hearts and minds, because by faith we can experience being lifted up into his power - the power of that glorious crown of peace that awaits us.

 

 

 

THE ENIGMA OF HOPE

THE ENIGMA OF HOPE 
We saw at the end of Acts chapter twenty-one, after the Turkish Jews tried to kill Paul and started a riot, the Roman centurion that rescued Paul from the angry mob gave Paul permission to speak to all the Jews from the steps of the temple of Jerusalem. 
Acts 22:1 Brothers and fathers, listen to me as I offer my defence … Paul speaks in Hebrew to the Jews recounting his religious pedigree as a Pharisee and his dramatic conversion to becoming a follower of Jesus. The Jews fly into another rage and tear at their clothes and take Paul to the Roman barracks to be scourged with whips. And when Paul declares his Roman citizenship, the Roman Commander puts a stop to the scourging both because of Paul’s Roman citizenship and because he was confused by the behaviour of the Jews. He didn’t understand why Paul was being accused so he released him and commanded that Paul be tried by the chief priests and the council. 

Chapter Twenty-three begins with the council trial and Paul declares to them all that his conscience is perfect before God, and this causes such offence to the high priest Ananias that he orders that Paul be slapped in the mouth, and Paul yells at him ‘God will slap you, you whitewashed wall. Who are you to break the law yourself by ordering me struck like that?’ When Paul was told that Ananias was the high priest he apologised and said he didn’t know that, and that he knew the Scriptures that say you should not speak evil of your leaders. Paul had to gain control of the situation somehow so he quickly thought of what he would say to the council group next. Some of them were Pharisees and some were Sadducees and only the Pharisees believed in angels and the Spirit and the resurrection of the dead, so Paul said that as a Pharisee himself he was being put on trial for simply believing in the resurrection of the dead. This ended up with the Pharisees and the Sadducees fighting with one another because of the Sadducees’ unbelief in these things - and the Roman commander had to put Paul in prison for his own safety.
That night the Lord stood beside Paul and said, ‘Don’t worry, Paul; just as you have told the people about me here in Jerusalem, so you must also in Rome.’
The next day forty Jews took a vow to kill Paul and they persuaded the council to bring Paul back in for further questioning. Paul’s nephew heard of their ambush, so he tipped off the Commander who called two of his officers and ordered him to get four hundred and seventy soldiers and spearmen and mounted cavalry, including a horse for Paul, to get him safely to Governor Felix in Caesarea.

Chapter twenty-four starts with Felix organising a new trial before the Jewish leaders in Caesarea.
Ananias the High Priest arrives from Jerusalem with some of the Jewish leaders and the lawyer Tertullus, to make their accusations against Paul. They immediately weigh in on how Paul was a troublemaker, inciting the Jews throughout the entire world to riots and trying to defile the Temple and causing rebellion against the Roman Empire back in Jerusalem. They blame Paul for confusing the Roman commander who forcefully disrupted their punishment of Paul at that time and they even complained about the commander defending Paul’s appeal to be tried by Roman law. 

Then it was Paul’s turn, and he told Felix that with all his knowledge of Jewish affairs for so many years he would know that he had never incited a riot in any synagogue and these men could never prove the things they accused him of doing. He then denies all the charges and repeats that all he did was to defend himself for believing that the dead will rise again. Felix knew that Christians didn’t start riots so he refused to condemn Paul and put him in custody instructing the guards to treat him gently and to allow his friends to visit him and bring him gifts to make his stay more comfortable. This was simply a political agenda of Felix who thought that he might gain financially by getting a bribe from Paul or his friends for Paul’s freedom. 

In the meantime Paul gets a chance to preach to Felix and his Jewish wife Drusilla about Jesus, but when he got to talking about obeying God and the judgement that was to come Felix became terrified and sent Paul away, still giving audience to Paul from time to time with the hope of a bribe which never came. And because Felix wanted to gain favour with the Jews, he left Paul in prison for two years. Then Felix was succeeded as governor by Porcius Festus.

Chapter twenty-five starts with Festus arriving in Caesarea and making a quick visit to Jerusalem which he probably wished he hadn’t because the first thing now on his to-do list was to respond to the disgruntled Jewish leaders who were still very unhappy with the way Felix had handled the trial of Paul and they wanted another trial and they wanted Festus to bring Paul to Jerusalem (Their plan was to waylay and kill Paul). But Festus told them to come to Caesarea the following week. The Jews arrived from Jerusalem and began hurling accusations which they couldn’t prove, and Paul again denied all charges of having opposed Jewish laws or of desecrating the Temple or of rebelling against the Roman government. He said to Festus ‘I am innocent, I appeal to Caesar.’ Festus conferred with his advisors and then replied, “Very well! You have appealed to Caesar, and to Caesar you shall go!”

A few days later King Agrippa arrived with his wife Bernice for a visit with Festus, who outlined to the king the case that the Jews had against Paul, and Festus said he was perplexed as to how to decide a case of this kind and that everything was still in the balance. He told Agrippa that he had asked Paul whether he would be willing to stand trial on these charges in Jerusalem, but that Paul had appealed to Caesar! Festus told Agrippa that he’d ordered Paul back to jail until he could arrange to get him to Rome. King Agrippa said that he would like to hear what Paul had to say, so Festus arranged another hearing and brought Paul to the court. When King Agrippa and Bernice arrived with great pomp and ceremony, Festus outlined the case against Paul to Agrippa and to the Jews and all the crowd. 

Chapter twenty-six starts with Agrippa hearing Paul again preaching about Jesus as the Messiah who would suffer and die for the forgiveness of our sins and to rise from the dead, and to bring light to Jews and Gentiles alike. This was so annoying to Festus that he shouted at Paul and said “Paul, you are insane. All your studying has damaged your mind!” Paul replied, “I am not insane, Most Excellent Festus, and King Agrippa knows who I am and what I’ve done for it was not done in a corner, and King Agrippa, I know you believe in the prophets. (Agrippa was related to the Herodian dynasty which was Jewish)
Agrippa interrupted him and said ‘after saying what you just said do you expect me to become a Christian?” And Paul replied, I would hope that you and everyone here might become a Christian like me, except for being in chains.
Then the king, the governor, and Bernice, and all the others stood and left, and as they talked it over afterwards, they agreed, “This man hasn’t done anything worthy of death or imprisonment.” And Agrippa said to Festus, “We could have set him free - if only he hadn’t appealed to Caesar!”
Arrangements were finally made for Paul to sail to Rome under heavy guard. 

Paul would likely have had a hope of converting Jews with the Gospel of grace, and converting governors and kings and emperors for the Kingdom of God that would perhaps influence all the nations of the world. Paul’s hope could have easily turned into disappointment in his dismal journey through those last few uninspiring chapters in Acts, with one contentious encounter after another, being resisted and rejected and mocked and scorned - but Paul had an even better kind of hope. 

We saw in the previous study in Acts the paradox of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will - how that God sovereignly takes us in his way but graciously accompanies and leads us on our way. And this undergirds the new kind of hope that he writes about to us – the enigma of hope in the glory of God, which is far higher than our human idea of hope which looks into the future with an expectation of seeing things work out the way we hope they will because of our faith and faithfulness and good planning.  We can’t live without hope, but the problem is our disappointments - so we live with hope and with disappointment because of not knowing what to expect or hope for with certainty. The only certain hope is the hope that God has for us. And Paul would certainly not be disappointed with his revelation of that hope to us which still speaks to us and to all the world two thousand years later.

Through Jesus we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God (God’s glory means God on display in our lives – not us). Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings (including our disappointments), knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces a hope, and that hope does not disappoint us, because God's love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:2-5) 
God plants a vision and a hope inside each one of us – it is his vision and his hope for us, and it does not disappoint us if we give our heart and mind to embracing that new and certain hope. 

It is what God is always himself achieving in us. 
He is always bringing us into his likeness.
It is what God is always doing for us.
He is always enriching our lives with his love and with all spiritual blessings.
It is what God is always doing through us.
He is imparting that love and blessing on through us to all those in our world.

There is a way we can position ourself within God’s certain hope that overcomes the future uncertainties and the lost hopes of the past. Those things only make us look around inside our heads. Instead we look out and see another horizon in our life that lets us find a deeper and higher meaning in what God in his vast creative power is doing for us (Ecclesiastes 3:11- the word for eternity in their hearts is horizon). 
The enigma Hope lets God do the hoping for us.
We rest in that certain hope and wait for that to come to us from God. And in that inner stillness we still move forward in faith with his word as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, but we do not create our own future with our own hope - God says that he creates that for us. 
‘For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope’ (Jeremiah 29:11).

When David was in the depths of despair, which is the exact opposite to hope, all he could do was speak to his own soul - he looked inside but he got sick of looking in there, he just got tired of doing that. In there was all about lost hopes and disappointments and his failures, so he said to himself, from where does my help come, from where does my hope come - and he looked to the Lord – he looked to the hills, looking to the horizon. That is God's horizon from where everything begins to flow - even in the natural he knew that the hills - not like the desert of his soul - the hills had streams of water flowing - the hills had shade. Looking to the horizon lifted his soul above his disappointments, and he knew something was coming to him from that place.  He lifted his eyes there with his thank you, with his gratitude, and began to magnify the Lord not the problems, not the disappointments, thank you Lord, Amen.

 

 

GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY AND OUR FREE WILL

GODS SOVEREIGNTY AND OUR FREE WILL 1

We read in the last half of Acts Nineteen how Paul sets up a Bible school called the school of Tyrannus and teaches both Jews and Greeks the Gospel there for two years, and God works powerfully through Paul, so that people who even touched Paul's clothing and handkerchiefs were healed. Many evil spirits came out of people through Paul’s ministry and many people who practiced witchcraft repented and burned their books of magic which were reported to be worth fifty thousand silver coins. 
When Paul saw that God’s word was now sovereign and prevailing in Ephesus he decided to move on to Macedonia. Then he said, ‘from there I’m going to Jerusalem and then I'm off to Rome - I've got to get to Rome’. But before he left Ephesus, a man named Demetrius who manufactured and traded statues of the Ephesian goddess Artemis (Diana to the Romans) accused Paul’s teachings of destroying the glory of Artemis, whom the whole world worshipped and that her statues would end up a pile of rubbish. These accusations set the crowd off into a frenzy, and Paul and those with him were again in danger of being severely punished for this crime.

But the mayor of Ephesus finally quietened the mob and said, ‘This conduct is unworthy of Artemis, and these men have done nothing to harm either our temple or our goddess, and if Demetrius and his artisans have a complaint, they can take it to court and have it dealt with - we're putting our city in serious danger here, because Rome does not look kindly on rioters.’ With that, he sent everybody home.

Reading on now in Acts Chapter Twenty after Paul had just farewelled the people of Ephesus Paul travels to Greece and preaches there for three months. He discovers that the Jews are plotting again to take his life, so he sails over to Troas in northern Turkey and preaches there for seven days. On the final day he went to preach at their communion service.
Acts 20:7… He preached in an upstairs room until midnight! and as Paul spoke on and on, a young man named Eutychus, sitting on the windowsill, went fast asleep and fell three stories to his death below. Paul went down and took him into his arms. “Don’t worry,” he said, “he’s all right!” And he was brought back to life! They all went back upstairs and ate the Lord’s Supper together; then Paul preached another long sermon—so it was dawn when he finally left them!

Acts 20:17 Paul then sailed to Miletus, and he sent a message to the elders of the church at Ephesus which was not far away, asking them to come down to the boat to meet him. When they arrived he told them about the plots of the Jews against his life, and that he had never shrunk back from telling them the full counsel of the Word of God.
Paul tells them that he is being drawn irresistibly by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem, not knowing what awaited him, except that the Holy Spirit had told him in city after city that jail and suffering lay ahead of him, but he says that life is worth nothing unless he uses it for doing the work assigned to him by the Lord.
Verse 36. He knelt and prayed with them, and they wept aloud as they embraced him in farewell, sorrowing most of all because he said that he would never see them again.
We now come to Acts 21.
Acts 21:1 After parting from the Ephesian elders, Paul sailed straight to Cos and then sailed across to the harbor of Tyre, in Syria, where he went ashore, found the local believers, and stayed with them for a week. These disciples spoke through Holy Spirit to Paul and warned him not to go on to Jerusalem. 
Then Paul went on to Caesarea and stayed at the home of Philip the Evangelist, one of the original seven deacons. He had four unmarried daughters who had the gift of prophecy. 
And during his stay of several days, a man named Agabus, who also had the gift of prophecy, arrived from Judea and visited Paul - he took Paul’s belt, bound his own feet and hands with it, and said, “The Holy Spirit declares, ‘So shall the owner of this belt be bound by the Jews in Jerusalem and turned over to the Romans.’ Hearing this, all the local believers and his traveling companions begged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem.
But he said, “Why all this weeping and trying to dishearten me! For I am ready not only to be jailed at Jerusalem but also to die for the sake of the Lord Jesus.” 

We saw earlier that Paul had felt drawn by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem.
When it was clear that he wouldn’t be dissuaded, they gave up and said, “God’s will be done.” So shortly afterwards Paul and his company packed their things and left for Jerusalem. 

When Paul arrived at Jerusalem all the believers at gave them a warm welcome, and on the second day Paul met with James and the elders of the Jerusalem church, and he recounted the many things God had accomplished among the Gentiles through his work.
They praised God but then James said, “You know, dear brother, how many thousands of Jews have also believed, and they all believe they must continue to follow the Jewish traditions and customs. They have been told that you are against the laws of Moses, against our Jewish customs, and that you forbid the circumcision of their children. Now what can be done? For they will certainly hear that you have come.
It wasn’t long before some Jews visiting from Turkey saw him in the Temple and roused a mob against him, and they grabbed hold of him, yelling, “Men of Israel! Help! Help! This is the man who preaches against our people and tells everybody to disobey the Jewish laws. Paul was dragged out of the Temple, and immediately the gates were closed behind him. And as they set about to kill him, word reached the commander of the Roman garrison that all Jerusalem was in an uproar. Paul declares his Roman citizenship to the Roman commander and in the following chapters through all kinds of hazards is escorted under an impressive military guard of two hundred soldiers, where he ends up preaching the Gospel to King Agrippa. 

These encounters of Paul’s with the prophets and then with James and the Jewish elders that he had debated with before, and then with the lynch mob that wanted to kill him present us with some interesting options regarding whether Paul was in the will of God or not in going to Jerusalem. God’s sovereignty and our free will.
The first option is, were those prophets really speaking through the Holy Spirit? 
The next option is, was Paul overriding the Holy Spirit and determined in his own will to get the true message home to the Jewish Christians about the freedom of the Gospel of grace? And had James forgotten or been pressured to water down the prophetic word about the Tabernacle of David back in Acts Chapter 15 about the freedom from Jewish laws?

The last option is, was there something bigger going on that only God knew about and had purposed, that nobody else knew about, including all the prophets, and James, and Paul’s companions and even Paul himself. We had seen in earlier accounts that when Paul felt he had a good idea about when he should act on something or where he should go and preach, like when he wanted to go into Asia, that the Holy Spirit prevented him. He sometimes humbly found out that God would block him and redirect him later on, with a clear word, after having Paul wait for something greater to come to pass that Paul would never have imagined, but in God’s good time. 

Those prophets prophesied correctly by the Holy Spirit that Paul would be beaten up and locked up in chains in Jerusalem, assuming in their love and concern for Paul that God was telling him not to go to Jerusalem, and Paul could still accept that and say, ‘So what!’ Paul knew that part of his job description was to go through the sufferings of being resisted and rejected and opposed. There was something bigger going on that only God knew about and had purposed for Paul about his desire get to Rome that he could never have possibly foreseen. 

It is that last option that teaches us that only God knows the end from the beginning in everything concerning his will and purpose for us, even though we are fully committed to do his will and even though he lets us hear from him, and even though he gives us a glimpse of certain things that will come to pass along the way. God finally brings his will to pass in his own remarkable way, and we are privileged in all our stumbling and bumbling and suffering, to be included in the outworking on earth of what God has planned to do from heaven. 

People may debate the paradox of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. However, we see here that God sovereignly takes us in his way but graciously accompanies and leads us on our way.
This is how God is able to fold together and reveal to us the intricate parts of the unknowable mystery of His sovereignty and our free will. The Bible says that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who say yes to his invitation of living according to his purpose. (Ephesians 3:28)
God meets us there and sorts out the loose ends of our bumbling in such a way that both we and God are very happy with that. That is why just turning to him and looking in his direction is often enough to receive a mountain of faith if we hang in there. He is so far above and beyond us in his workings with us that our acceptance of his unlimited sovereignty and our severely limited capacity to discern the future becomes the peace within us that surpasses all understanding. It is no longer a paradox but a new kind of certainty. 

 

BAPTISM OF FIRE

BAPTISM OF FIRE

After Paul’s ministry to the Greek philosophers of Athens in Chapter Seventeen Paul left Athens and went to Corinth and met Aquila and his wife Priscilla and lodged with them, working together with them at their common trade of tentmaking. Aquila and Priscilla had just arrived from Italy after being expelled from Rome along with many other Jews by the Roman Emperor Claudius Caesar. For many years the Jews had been exercising political activism and resistance against the Roman oppression wherever it was. This was apparent in the time of Jesus, who had been perceived as the Saviour from the Roman oppression in Judea for many Jews, and this is why so many were disappointed when he declared that his Kingdom was not of this world and told Pilate to crucify him. And the Romans finally killed or scattered over a million Jews and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70AD. 

Then finally Silas and Timothy arrived at Corinth from Macedonia and joined Paul as he preached in the synagogues, but the Jews argued and totally contradicted him at every turn, so Paul left off preaching to the Jews and began preaching to the Corinthian Gentiles and a great many of them believed and were baptized. One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a dream and said to him: "Keep it up, and don't let anyone intimidate or silence you. No matter what happens, I'm with you and no one is going to be able to hurt you. I have many people with me in this city." That encouraged Paul and he stayed another year and a half, faithfully teaching the Word of God to the Corinthians. Then when it was time to leave Corinth Paul sailed with Aquilla and Priscilla across the Aegean Sea to Syria and then journeyed across to Ephesus which was one of the largest and most important cities in the ancient Mediterranean. Priscilla and Aquila decided to stay on there but Paul left them and travelled east to Antioch. 

Then a man named Apollos came to Ephesus. He was a Jew, born in Alexandria in Egypt, and a very powerful speaker, accurate in everything he taught about Jesus up to a point, but he only went as far as the baptism of John. When Priscilla and Aquila came across Apollos and heard him preach, they perceived that something was lacking so they took him aside and told him the full story of the power of the Holy Spirit, and about the life of Jesus within. Apollos then left Ephesus and travelled to Corinth to preach there.

We now come to Chapter Nineteen, and it so happened that while Apollos was preaching in Corinth, Paul made his way down through the mountains back into Ephesus, and came across some disciples there, and must have perceived something lacking in the way they spoke about their faith in Jesus (presumably the same lack that Aquilla and Priscilla saw in Apollos). The first thing he said to them was, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They told Paul that they had never even heard of having the Holy Spirit within them, so Paul asked them how they were baptized, and they told him they had only received John's baptism.

He told them that John preached a baptism of radical life-change – a commitment in their hearts and minds to live for God and to purify their intentions - away from self and towards God. He said this to prepare people to be ready to receive the promised One coming after him, who was Jesus. John the Baptist told people that while he baptised with water the One to come was far greater than himself, John prophesied that ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. He will separate the chaff from the wheat, burning the chaff with fire and storing away the good seed in the heart. The good seed is the word that Jesus speaks to us for faith to grow in our heart.

As soon as the Ephesian believers heard this - Paul laid hands on them and they were baptized in the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. From that moment on, they began to move in the supernatural gifts of the Spirit and to proclaim the greatness of God's mighty acts. But when Jesus brings us into the Baptism with the Holy Spirit it is not just about the power of the anointing of the gifts of the Holy Spirit or just about the love of God being spread abroad in our hearts - It is also about being baptised with the fire of the Holy Spirit for the purifying fire of God to burn out of us the self-glorifying and self-serving desires of our hearts. 

In the Scriptures fire speaks of purifying, which is the loving chastisement of the Father upon our souls. It is not about punishment, which comes from a different motivation than chastisement. The motive for punishment is retribution and pay back whereas chastisement comes from the loving good will of Godly authority. Chastening develops character and integrity and steadfastness so that we can grow in God to live a settled and productive life of hope and faith, but the experience of chastening in our souls is still unpleasant and difficult to go through. 

If people are deprived from the learning experiences of suffering through life’s challenges the growth of character and spiritual potential will not happen for them. We currently live in a progressive and permissive culture that lets young people invent their own values and avoid taking personal responsibility of many of life’s painful challenges. The ACT even introduced legislation last month for fourteen-year-old children to request euthanasia. Today’s teenagers are being taught that they can identify as being who or what they would like to be – male or female or something else – what about a cat? And the government legally protects them so that they can be as free and as happy as they think they will be. 

Paul said that he was willing to go through whatever challenges of life he needed to, and to experience the weaknesses and limitations of his own humanity in order that he might know the power of the resurrection life of Jesus within him (Philippian 3:10-14). In other words, he saw this as sharing in the sufferings of Christ – He said bring it on Lord – I want to know why I’m here with you on this planet. 

Peter spoke about how this Baptism of fire worked to grow us in our faith. He wrote ‘do not be surprised at the fiery trials that come upon you to test you, as though something strange is happening to you. Sharing in Christ's sufferings is cause for joy, just as it is when his glorious life is on display through you. (1Peter 4:12)

We have the choice to get all the useless and ungodly things out in the open before God as he reveals them to us so that we can find his mercy and grace. We let him prune off the deadwood branches and let him regrow us as productive branches drawing from his life, abiding in the vine. This Holy Spirit fire will progressively burn off the dead wood and stubble day by day and purify our hearts and heal and save our souls - or we can let it all pile up like deadwood behind us, but if we collaborate with the Holy Spirit in this burning off we enjoy the sweetness of his life within us here and now and also avoid suffering a fiery sense of loss when we stand before him at the end. 
This is stated clearly by Paul. ‘No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ (That’s a prerequisite). Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. Don’t you know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone trashes (phtheir??) the temple of God, God will put the heat on them (phtheir??). For the temple of God is holy, and you are that temple. (1Corinthians 3:11)

What is this work that we build on this foundation of Jesus Christ that turns trash into gold? 
The word ’work’ (Greek – ergon) is used in that passage of Scripture four times so it must be an important word to get that much emphasis. Strong’s Concordance defines it as anything accomplished by hand, art, industry, or mind - any product whatever. In other words, it is an endless list. In this Scripture it is not just about things being done by the mind and the heart and the hands and feet, but it is about the energy that is behind the work that involves having faith and finding grace and mercy in a loving partnership with God. Anything that we do together with God either for our own spiritual edification or as a blessing for someone else, will produce the gold of God’s spiritual energy and character that will endure forever. Knowing that Jesus is with us changes our fear into faith, our despair into hope, our indifference into compassion and our selfishness into generous love. That is the work - and each one of us can choose as far as we are able, in whatever we are doing, to say yes to God - for him to live and move and have his being in us.

 

ONE BLOOD

ONE BLOOD 

Continuing the narrative in Acts seventeen from verse one we see that Paul and Silas and Timothy arrive at Thessalonica in the northern part of Greece, where Paul preaches in the synagogues as usual, teaching from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, and many Jews and devout Gentile Greek men and women believed. But Paul and his company encountered the usual opposition from unbelieving Jews who stirred up a rowdy mob that attacked the house of Jason, Paul’s host in Thessalonica, and arrested Jason for shielding Paul whom they charged with ‘turning the world upside down’ because he taught that there was another God greater than Caesar. Jason finally helps Paul escape the city and Paul and Silas and Timothy travelled to Berea where their Gospel is welcomed by the discerning Bereans who searched out and verified the Scriptures that Paul taught them – and again many devout Greeks, both men and women believed. However, the angry Jews from Thessalonica heard that Paul was preaching his Gospel again in that place and they pursued Paul and his group all the way to Berea and stirred up another rowdy mob. So Timothy and Silas helped Paul escape by sea to Athens in the southern area of Greece, and told Paul to wait for them to come to him when they could.

All that troublesome threat and harassment turned out to be another providential arrangement by The Holy Spirit to get Paul to talk to the Greek philosophers in Athens who followed the teachings of the Epicureans and the Stoics. They all believed that there were gods but that the gods were merely symbolic of their preferred self-serving philosophies. The Epicureans espoused the search for happiness and pleasure and their gods were caricatures of their pleasure seeking. The Stoics on the other hand believed in detachment from Epicurean sensuality along with an indifference to pain or happiness which allowed them to focus on more important religious matters with their gods and idols. Every day Paul went out on the streets and talked with anyone who would listen about Jesus and his resurrection from the dead. Followers of both those Greek philosophies were curious about this new God of the resurrection that Paul spoke about, so they arranged for him to meet them at the Areopagus, which was an open hill area used as a court for political and religious discussion and debate. And they asked him about these strange new things he was bringing to their ears.  

Paul had noticed an inscription to one of their gods that they called ‘the unknown god ‘and that god was the one that he decided to bring to their attention. Paul fully understood the Greek spirit, which was obsessed with seeking knowledge and wisdom, and he also understood their problem with their so-called gods. He knew that while they had defined and labelled gods for everything they wanted according to their philosophies and ideologies, their deepest human need to know God went totally unmet, and their unknown god had nothing to say about their self-serving beliefs and ideologies. 

Paul the Greek scholar was familiar with that earnest search for God in his own mind and heart and he had come to know their so-called unknown God personally and he was able to bring those people the revelation that their unknown god was the one true God revealed in Jesus Christ. In debating with these Greek philosophers Paul sums up the history and the destiny of humanity from the very beginning of history and reveals the hidden answer to the search in every human heart which is to know God (Ecclesiastes 3:11 eternity in their hearts). He set about revealing God to them as the one who does not dwell in man-made temples, and who has no need for statues or idols, since he gives life to all living things. He revealed God as the one who is vitally interested in every human life, and who has created all people from one blood or from one created human life in Adam. 

This was not the way that Paul preached to the Jews. Paul would only sum up their history from the time of Abraham and of once being slaves in Egypt and being delivered from slavery through Moses who gave them the law and the Commandments. He would tell the Jews that their promised Messiah for whom they had always been searching had arrived in the here and now in the person of Jesus Christ. He would tell them that God was in Christ forgiving them of their sin and joining them to God as a new Creation in Christ through the Holy Spirit, and the sad but happy fact was that some would believe him and become faithful followers, and some would not. 

When Paul spoke to those men from Athens at the Aeropagus almost two thousand years ago he was speaking down through the ages into our world at this current time in history with its materialistic mindset and ideologies and its obsession with political and cultural and social identities that all compete for attention and prominence and power. Paul told them then as he tells us now that God has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might search for Him and find Him, for he is close to each one of us’ (Acts 17:28).

That means for us here today in this here and now life that we can find fulfillment in him as ‘God with us‘- Jesus, and in verse twenty nine he even quotes one of their own Greek writers who said, ‘In him we live and move and have our being, as we are his offspring. And Scripture goes on to say Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or something shaped by art and man's devising. In past times God may have tolerated man’s ignorance about these things, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent from that ignorant and self-serving mindset and to put away false and imagined gods and ideologies and to believe in and worship God in Christ, and He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead. (vs 31)"
Paul here presents God as the reality of all realties who now exists as the glorified person of Jesus Christ who has risen from the dead and who wants to exist and live within and through our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was when Paul preached the resurrection of Jesus that some mocked him. But others were open to this truth and said, ‘We will hear you again on this matter’. The Bible says that a number of faithful people became followers on that day. That is such a happy but sad reality about the acceptance and rejection of truth that we still see around us today. 
 
Paul’s words to them and to us can turn this current world upside down once more - a sovereign God is in command of our lives, no matter where we live, what we are doing or what the surrounding circumstances are, and he has a purpose and destiny for each one of us in all those things to seek and to find and to know God. Paul said – ‘we are all of one blood’ - all of humanity in Adam - the entire global community of all nations and tribes and ideologies including the evils of terrorism that incite war to the death. Nonetheless as the Bible says about everyone on the earth in any and every circumstance of life that their reality of all realities is that they may search for God in the hope that they may find him ‘in God they live and move and have their being’ – even when they do not know it or even want to know it. That truth must not be left in the setting of an unknown god as - it is to be declared to everyone and lived out by those who will believe that their lives are hidden with Christ in God. Is this a fantasy of Paul’s – or is it indeed the reality of all realities for all people.

Paul also declared in his later writings to us something further to this, that it was no longer just him that was living in God - but that it was Christ who was living through him. And this is the mystery of an unlimited God being made manifest through a weak limited human being.
God once lived as pure Spirit Being in the Trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in Heaven, and this pure Spirit Being was totally unlimited in all respects. But when Christ became incarnated and born from above in the person of Jesus into the earth God changed his Being from pure Spirit Being and became embodied through a limited human being in Jesus Christ who said he was ‘the fullness of the godhead bodily’. Jesus told people ‘If you have seen me you have seen the Father’ then Jesus died and rose again. 

And the Father and the Son then sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts as the Spirit of the glorified resurrected human Jesus so that we can believe like Paul that God lives in us as Father and Son and Holy Spirit (Ephesians 3:19). We may well hunger and desire that we can live our lives through Christ but how much more must we realize that God yearns and desires to live the fulness of his Godhead life through us. It is not our limited humanity that stops God from having his Being embodied in the earth as well as in heaven. It is our unbelief that God could or would do such a thing – but, We have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the glory will be of God and not of us’ (2Corinthians 4:7).
Paul presents us with the reality of all realities, that by faith we can embody and impart the life and presence of God into our world around us. That is the reality sitting deeper than the material reality that we see and touch with our physical senses. We may be sitting in our car held up in traffic and that may appear to us as our frustrating or tedious reality that affects our thinking and our emotions. But there is another reality beneath that one, which is the fact that we are going somewhere with a sense of purpose, perhaps to get to work, or to meet up with other people, or to have our car serviced, or to arrive at an appointment. But the reality of all realities that lies beneath that is that we are embodying the living God, who is where we are and who desires to do what he knows will bring his will and his power and his love into the blessing of what we do. This becomes our knowable reality as we believe in the activity of his good will that graces that moment.
As we share communion today we are not simply partakers of the one blood from Adam but are partakers by faith of the one blood of Jesus Christ. The cup we drink is the blood of the New Covenant that gives us new life. The bread is his body, and we can embody that truth. As we sit together in the grace of that communion moment we can realise the reality of all realities that we embody the father, Son and Holy Spirit and can bring that reality into the lives of those in our world as we go out from this place.

 

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR 

We are continuing in the narrative of Silas now becoming Paul’s partner instead of Barnabas as Paul goes on his second missionary journey back to Lystra and Iconium 

We now read in Acts Chapter sixteen and verse one that Paul and Silas go to Lystra where they meet a new Christian named Timothy, who had a Jewish Christian mother and a Greek father. Paul was so impressed with Timothy that he asked him to join them on their journey.
They set off together and tried to go into Asia Minor but the Holy Spirit told them not to, so they travelled through Galatia deciding to head north for the province of Bithynia, but again the Holy Spirit said no. Paul then had a vision in a dream where he saw a man over in Macedonia in Greece, pleading with him, ‘Come over here and help us’, and it became clear to Paul then that God was sending them to preach the Gospel in Philippi, a Roman colony just inside the Macedonian border. When they got there, they preached to some women by a riverbank where they would come to pray and worship God each Sabbath. One of the women was named Lydia from Thyatira, who was a purple cloth merchant and who opened her heart to all that Paul was saying. She became baptized along with all her household and asked Paul and the others to stay at her house as her guests. 

Then one day as Paul and all the others were heading down to have prayer beside the river, they met a demon-possessed slave girl, who was a fortune-teller that earned a lot of money for her managers, and she followed along behind Paul shouting, “These men are servants of God, and they have come to tell you how to have your sins forgiven”. She did this for a few days until Paul became so distressed with this that he turned and commanded a religious spirit to come out of her, and when it left, her managers realized that their hopes of wealth were now shattered. These influential managers grabbed Paul and Silas and dragged them before the judges at the marketplace for upsetting the Roman peace. The judges ordered them to be stripped and beaten with whips, then thrown into prison, and the jailer was threatened with death if they escaped, so he put them into the inner dungeon with their feet shackled to the ground. 

Just before midnight, Paul and Silas decided to sing praises to the Lord, and the other prisoners were listening, and suddenly at the midnight hour there was a great earthquake; the prison was shaken to its foundations, all the doors flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off! The jailer woke up to see the prison doors wide open, and assuming that his prisoners had escaped, he drew his sword to kill himself. But Paul yelled to him, “Don’t do it! We are all here!” Trembling with fear, the jailer called for lamps and ran to the dungeon and fell down before Paul and Silas. He brought them out and begged them, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

They replied, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, and your entire household.” Then the jailer took them to his home quarters and cleaned up their whiplashed backs. Paul then told him and all his household the truth of the Gospel and the jailer believed - and he and all his family were baptized. He provided a meal for all of them, and they joyfully praised God together as believers that very night. 
The next morning the judges sent police officers over to the jail to order the jailer to let them go, so the jailer told Paul they were free to leave, but Paul would have nothing of it. He explained that if they had been publicly beaten and jailed without trial as Roman citizens there was no way they were going to leave secretly, so he demanded that the judges come themselves and release them. The police officers reported this to the judges, who feared for their lives when they heard Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, so they came to the jail and begged them to go and brought them out publicly, pleading with them to leave the city. Paul and Silas then returned to the home of Lydia, where they met with the believers and preached to them once more before leaving town, knowing that this would have made the local Christians feel more secure after they had left the city.

There is a lesson of faith we can learn from this account of Paul and Silas as they were in chains in the prison cell at the midnight hour. The way they acted teaches us about how to respond when we are in circumstances that are beyond our control. It is about expecting the unexpected by trusting God that he is supernaturally at work for us. Paul had firmly set his heart on doing the best that he could to fulfill what God wanted him to do on this journey and he had been guided by the Holy Spirit as he went forward. Twice he had decided to go in a certain direction, and he was told by the Holy Spirit in some special way not to go that way. He was even given the dream of the man from Macedonia, and all this would have given Paul great reassurance. 

So it would have been logical for Paul to think that by going to Philippi as he was directed by the Holy Spirit that everything would fall into place when he got there and that there would be a move of God for the salvation of the people. But God had a number of unexpected surprises waiting for him. This is the first lesson that we can learn – we cannot presume that God will give us a magic carpet ride into seeing his supernatural work in action – there will be trials of faith and patience.

For example, the way this worked out for Paul was that things went pleasingly well for a while as Lydia gets saved and baptized and then more people get touched by God and then suddenly everything starts to go shockingly bad. It couldn’t have gone worse for Paul and Silas to end up being arrested and whipped and imprisoned and shackled in chains against a wall, and perhaps awaiting a death sentence.

Then after learning about trials of faith we can learn another lesson from Paul and Silas. For us it would be like everything going so bad that the midnight hour arrives where things could not become any darker, and where grimly ask ourselves ‘what do I do now? - there seems to be no hope’ But the lesson to learn here is that that this is when we should have the most hope. This is when there’s nothing we can do but be still and see the salvation of our God. This is where we move away from being conscious of what the world is doing to us and move towards being conscious of what God is doing for us. This shift of our thinking is vital for any faith transformation of our soul. 

If Silas would have asked Paul that question – ‘what do we do now?’ he would have heard only one answer. Paul would have said ‘There’s only one thing to do Silas – we start praising the Lord because only he can do the supernatural work to get us out of this – so let’s just praise the Lord with all of our hearts – Hallelujah!’
Paul knew that God wanted to show them his sovereign rule over everything that was happening and to show them his mighty acts in their midnight hour. Paul would have been reminded of Moses at the Red sea and Joshua at the walls of Jericho, and David telling his soul to magnify the Lord in his fear and distress.  
And finally, there are a number of Scriptures that mention the midnight hour and its end time significance about the darkest hour having to come before a new dawn can break. 
We will look at three of these Scriptures (among a number of others) where the the midnight hour Scriptures always fall into one of these these three contexts, which are a)Times of judgement between good and evil, b) a bride being prepared for her bridegroom and c) times of shakings where prisoners get set free from darkness and find salvation.

The first example of a midnight hour situation is in Exodus chapter twelve when God pronounces judgement and says that at the midnight hour he would pass through the land of Egypt and strike all the firstborn in the land and execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt.

The second example of a midnight hour situation is about the time when some bridesmaids go to sleep while the bridegroom is being delayed, and at midnight a cry is heard: 'Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!' Some of the bridesmaids have no oil in their lamps and can’t go out to meet him but the wise ones do – speaking of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. (Matthew 25:6)

The third example of a midnight hour situation is the one that we have just read about in the book of Acts with Paul and Silas where God supernaturally sets people free from bondage and where they can sing ‘my chains fell off I’ve been set free I once was blind but now I see’.

We do not know the times and the seasons of God but there are certain times in history when the times are the darkest and God gives the world its warnings, and he gives his Church his message of hope for setting people free. We are certainly in a dark time of history and God is bringing many things of the world into the light for them to be seen and judged for what they are. He is also encouraging his church to become more pure of heart and prepared as a bride for his Son. He is also bringing light into the darkness for the blind to see and he is shaking all things and opening prison doors for spiritual chains to fall off people so that they can be set free.

 

GOD ISRAEL PAUL US

GOD  ISRAEL  PAUL  US 
We saw in the first part of Acts fifteen from verses one to eighteen last week how James interpreted the prophecy of Amos concerning the rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David. That prophecy foretold the future history of Israel and also that there will be a restoration of the house of God’s presence in the earth called the Tabernacle of David – and also called the church of the firstborn by Paul in Hebrews. This would be a place of faith in Christ in the liberty of the Spirit for all of mankind that would now be gathered to God from all over the world.

I now want to comment on Acts 15 from verse 19 to verse 30. (The Scriptures are at the end of these notes). After James had declared the prophesy of Amos concerning the Tabernacle of David he speaks on behalf of the Jewish elders and apostles including Paul and Barnabas, to the congregation, and he summarises the decision of the council regarding salvation as being through grace and faith in Christ and that they should not make the Gentiles obey the Jewish laws. However, he made two exceptions that concerned the Jewish food laws, and it was only later on that Paul was able to teach and to guide both Jewish and gentile Christians on how to honour God in these issues according to their faith and also to their conscience before God. Paul explained it was about loving one another and being sensitive to not offend the conscience of others who are weaker in their faith. The story continues from verse 30. 

Paul and Barnabas leave Jerusalem along with Silas and Judas and report to the Christians in Antioch about the results of the council and their new freedom in the faith, because of the prophecy of Amos. Everybody in Antioch was happy with that, and it was decided that Judas and Silas, who had stayed for a while and had strengthened the church there with powerful preaching, should be sent back to Jerusalem. But Silas decided to stay on in Antioch (vs.34).

Paul then suggested to Barnabas that they should go back to Turkey and visit the cities where they had preached before and see how the new converts were going. Barnabas agreed with this and said that he wanted to take John Mark with him, but Paul disagreed because he thought that John mark had let them down by deserting them in Pamphylia earlier on. Their heated contention over this was so great that they parted company from that time on. Barnabas took John Mark with him to Cypress while Paul took Silas with him to Syria and Cilicia to strengthen those churches, and the Antioch church blessed their journey.

There is another account of this story which fills in some gaps. Paul writes his personal account in the Book of Galatians about his time at the council at Jerusalem with James which we have just read about. His account starts in Galatians two from verse one through to verse eleven. He was certainly not impressed with some of the legalistic church leaders. ‘They tried to get us all tied up in their rules, like slaves in chains. But we did not listen to them for a single moment’, And the great leaders of the church who were there had nothing to add to what I was preaching.’  He ends his account of the council meeting by saying ‘they shook hands with Barnabas and me and encouraged us to keep right on with our preaching to the Gentiles while they continued their work with the Jews.’ 

He then continues from Galatians 2:12-20 recounting how that a little while after that council meeting, when he and Barnabas were back in Antioch Peter visited the Antioch church and seemed to join in and approve of the freedom of their faith, until when later on some Jewish Christian friends of James also visited the church. Peter then stopped eating with the gentile Christians for fear of what they would tell James because of his ruling about Christians having to obey Jewish food laws, and this behaviour of Peter highly offended Paul. 

It is interesting that this account of Paul’s of the council meeting and Peter’s visit to Antioch soon after and his offensive legalistic behaviour was not mentioned by Luke in this chapter of Acts. Perhaps he refrained from mentioning it out of respect for Peter, even though he does mentions in Acts 15 the disagreement of Paul and Barnabas. This is what Paul wrote about Peter’s visit.
Galatians 2:12-20 When Peter came to Antioch I had to oppose him publicly, speaking strongly against what he was doing, for it was very wrong. For when he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians who don’t bother with circumcision and the many other Jewish laws. But afterwards, when some Jewish friends of James came, he wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore because he was afraid of what these Jewish legalists, who insisted that circumcision was necessary for salvation, would say; and then all the other Jewish Christians and even Barnabas became hypocrites too, following Peter’s example, though they certainly knew better. 

Paul continues his rebuke of Peter and Barnabas in Galatians 2:14
‘When I saw what was happening and that they weren’t being honest about what they really believed and weren’t following the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Though you are a Jew by birth, you have since discarded the Jewish laws; so why, all of a sudden, are you trying to make these Gentiles obey them? You and I are Jews by birth, not mere Gentile sinners, and yet we Jewish Christians know very well that we cannot become right with God by obeying our Jewish laws but only by faith in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And so we, too, have trusted Jesus Christ, that we might be accepted by God because of faith—and not because we have obeyed the Jewish laws. For no one will ever be saved by obeying them.” 

Paul continues to contend with Peter and Barnabas about their disappointing behaviour in front of the Christians in Antioch and concludes by saying,
I am offending God if I start rebuilding the old system I have been destroying of trying to be saved by keeping Jewish laws, for it was through reading the Scriptures that I came to realize that I could never find God’s favour by trying—and failing—to obey the laws. I came to realize that acceptance with God comes by believing in Christ. I have been crucified with Christ: and it is no longer I that live, but it is Christ who lives in me.’

Paul’s teaching allowed the Gentile world to hear the full Gospel of grace and truth, not only regarding the freedom from the shackles of legalism and Jewish tradition, but to give us entrance into the life-giving Spirit of Jesus. This is the faith we contend for, as the goal of our faith - the salvation and healing of our souls and our living in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

(before I finish I have more to say about … )We will read again the prophecy of Amos that James declared to the Jewish Christian leaders in Jerusalem concerning rebuilding the Tabernacle of David.  
Acts 15:16 ‘I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; I will rebuild its ruins and set it up; So that the rest of mankind may seek the LORD, even all the Gentiles who are called by My name, says the LORD who reveals his plans made from the beginning.
When James quotes Amos he is saying that there will be a restoration of the house of God’s presence in the earth called the Tabernacle of David. This would be a place of faith in Christ in the liberty of the Spirit for all of mankind that would now be gathered to God from all over the world. He says that the rejection of God by Israel in the days of Amos is the same as their current rejection of Jesus. Mankind was now being welcomed to dwell with God in this new spiritual house called the Tabernacle of David until Jesus would return to the earth.   

Jesus also said this prophetically about Israel and about us ‘I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and I am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. And I have other sheep which are not of this fold; I must also bring them in, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd. John 10:14
This prophecy of Amos goes on to speak about the scatterings of Israel as a nation and also speaks about a permanent final regathering of Israel (verses 11-15). There were two scatterings since Amos – one was when Israel was taken captive in Babylon for seventy years and then regathered, as recorded in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. And the last scattering was when the temple was destroyed in 70 AD - not long after James makes this declaration. Isaiah also prophesies about two regatherings since Amos, and that Israel would not remain scattered but finally be gathered again ‘a second time’ (the final regathering actually occurred in 1948). 

We will read the prophecy of Isaiah. “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people, which shall be left, from Assyria and from Egypt, and from Pathros and from Cush and from Elam and from Shinar and from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. 12. And He shall set up an ensign for the nations and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” (Isaiah 11:11-12 (AV)

The nation of Israel was re-established in 1948 with Jews being drawn back to Israel from all over the world and has remained and prospered miraculously against impossible odds – and is there to stay until Jesus returns. We are witnessing this phenomenon at this moment as uncomfortable as it is to see Israel in Old Testament warfare again, but I pray that Hamas will return the hostages and that innocent lives will be spared on both sides, and I pray particularly for Israel the prayer of Paul’s from Romans 9 that all Israel will come to salvation through Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Acts 15:18-40 That is what the Lord says, who reveals his plans made from the beginning.
“And so my judgment is that we should not insist that the Gentiles who turn to God must obey our Jewish laws, except that we should write to them to refrain from eating meat sacrificed to idols, from all fornication, and also from eating unbled meat of strangled animals. For these things have been preached against in Jewish synagogues in every city on every Sabbath for many generations.”
Then the apostles and elders and the whole congregation voted to send delegates to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, to report on this decision. The men chosen were two of the church leaders—Judas (also called Barsabbas) and Silas.
This is the letter they took along with them:
“From: The apostles, elders and brothers at Jerusalem.
“To: The Gentile brothers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. Greetings!
“We understand that some believers from here have upset you and questioned your salvation, but they had no such instructions from us. So it seemed wise to us, having unanimously agreed on our decision, to send to you these two official representatives, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul. These men—Judas and Silas, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ—will confirm orally what we have decided concerning your question.
“For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden of Jewish laws on you than to abstain from eating food offered to idols and from unbled meat of strangled animals, and, of course, from fornication. If you do this, it is enough. Farewell.”
The four messengers went at once to Antioch, where they called a general meeting of the Christians and gave them the letter. And there was great joy throughout the church that day as they read it.
Then Judas and Silas, both being gifted speakers, preached long sermons to the believers, strengthening their faith. They stayed several days, and then Judas and Silas were encouraged to return to Jerusalem taking greetings and appreciation to those who had sent them. But Silas decided to stay on in Antioch. Paul and Barnabas also stayed on at Antioch to assist several others who were preaching and teaching there.
Several days later Paul suggested to Barnabas that they return again to Turkey and visit each city where they had preached before, to see how the new converts were getting along. Barnabas agreed and wanted to take along John Mark. But Paul didn’t like that idea at all, since John Mark had deserted them in Pamphylia. Their disagreement over this was so sharp that they separated. Barnabas took John Mark with him and sailed for Cyprus, while Paul chose Silas and, with the blessing of the believers, left for Syria and Cilicia to encourage the churches there.

 

FREEDOM OF FAITH

FREEDOM OF FAITH 
Acts 15:1 While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch, some men from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers that unless they adhered to the ancient Jewish custom of circumcision, they could not be saved. Paul and Barnabas argued and discussed this with them at length, and finally the believers sent them to Jerusalem, accompanied by some local men, to talk to the apostles and elders there about this question. 4. Arriving in Jerusalem, they met with the church leaders and Paul and Barnabas reported on what God had been doing through their ministry. But then some of the men who had been Pharisees before their conversion declared that all Gentile converts must be circumcised and be required to follow all the Jewish customs and ceremonies.

This was a history changing moment – The first great Church Reformation - from one Covenant to another. The biggest issue for the Jewish Christians was that Gentile Christians should get circumcised, as that was the seal of the Hebrew Covenant through Abraham - but the sign and seal of the New Covenant through Jesus was the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of liberty and freedom (Ephesians 1:13). 

6. So the apostles and church elders set a further meeting to decide this question. After long discussion, Peter stood and addressed them: “Brothers, you all know that God chose me from among you long ago to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles so that they also could believe. God, who knows men’s hearts, confirmed the fact that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he gave him to us. He made no distinction between them and us - he purified their hearts through faith, just as he did ours. And now are you going to correct God by burdening the Gentiles with a yoke that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? Don’t you believe that we are all saved the same way, by the grace of the Lord Jesus?
There was no further discussion, and everyone now listened as Barnabas and Paul told them about the miracles God had done through them among the Gentiles, and when they had finished, James took the floor. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. Peter has told you about the time God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people called by his name (Christians). And this fact of Gentile conversion agrees with what the prophets predicted from the prophet Amos: 
‘I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up; so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, all the Gentiles who are called by My name (Christians), says the LORD who does all these things.'

God had told Amos in his day that because of Israel’s rejection of God they would be judged and here James is likening Israel’s rejection in the days of Amos to Israel’s rejection of Jesus at the current time and he is saying that the rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David signifies the rest of mankind being now invited to become God’s people in the earth. 
Gentiles were coming into God’s new Spiritual House of the Church – a new temple or tabernacle, and the Church would soon become a totally Gentile Church for a determined period of history, as quoted by Jesus ‘until the times of the Gentiles is fulfilled’ (Luke 21:24 – in troubled times), and also quoted by Paul ‘My brothers I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery: a partial blindness has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And then all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, (Romans 11:25) 
Israel is back in their physical territory today (in ongoing conflict) but they await God’s time to be brought into his spiritual territory of faith. We are in the same waiting time now, but it is for God’s final number of Gentiles to be saved. Only God knows that time.

When we read of how the Tabernacle of David was set up in First Chronicles Chapter fifteen, it was simply a tent on top of Mount Zion and it became the dwelling place for the Ark of the Covenant, which had always represented God’s abiding presence among the nation of Israel. The Ark of the Covenant was first fashioned in the wilderness at God’s command and was placed in the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle of Moses. However, when Israel sought to presumptuously use the ark to their own ends by taking the ark into battle, they soon learned that they had violated God’s order concerning the holiness of God’s presence, and the ark was lost to the Philistines and the glory departed from Israel. (1 Sam 4). Saul then became king and had ignored the ark all through the time of his reign. (1 Chronicles 13:2-3). 
The Philistines, enemies of God, found that the ark brought judgements upon them and not blessing. They cast off the ark and sent it to the people of Beth-shemesh, and further judgement came upon the people there. The ark was then discarded at Kiriath-jearin, where it remained for 20 years. (1 Sam 5 - 8). After this time, David prayed that he might find place for the ark I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.” (Psalm 132:4)

“And David gathered all Israel together in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the Lord unto his place, a tent on Mt Zion, which he had prepared for it. “So the leaders of Israel took the Ark to Jerusalem with shouts of joy, the blowing of horns and trumpets, the crashing of cymbals, and loud playing on the harps and zithers. But as the Ark arrived in Jerusalem, David’s wife Michal, the daughter of King Saul, felt a contempt for David as she watched from the window and saw him dancing like crazy (1 Chron 15:1). Michal rebuked David for this and he said ‘I did this before The Lord who chose me above your father (Saul) and I was celebrating before the Lord’. Michal was judged by God for this.
The ministry of praise and worship at this time was released in a measure never before seen in Israel. It was at this time that most of the Psalms were written, from which we sing many songs of praise and worship. David took the holiest of all things - the ark of the covenant, the presence of God in the Holy Place of the tabernacle of Moses, into his Tabernacle/tent on top of Mt Zion. 
This means that the tabernacle of David was a temporary dwelling place for God until another dwelling place was fully prepared – the temple of Solomon. There would be no going back to the Tabernacle of Moses from the tabernacle of David. So when James quoted Amos saying that the Christian Church would now rebuild the Tabernacle of David he was prophesying that a new era of time had now begun for the Church to express the freedom of faith that flow from the indwelling presence of The Lord. 

We are now in that era as the church that is purposed to live with a conscious sense of the presence of God expressing the freedom and liberty of the spirit like David did. We remain in this expression of the freedom of faith until we dwell together in the new eternal Tabernacle of God in Heaven. ‘And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people…for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. (Revelation 21:3,22) 

Paul tells us that we are the Church of Mt. Zion where David’s tabernacle dwelt. He tells us that we are not at Mt. Sinai which speaks of the Law and blood sacrifices. Paul is saying that this Church is a Heavenly Church on earth living in the power of God’s Spirit and in communion with the saints in Heaven.  But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the gathering of enumerable celebrating angels; and to the church of the Firstborn enrolled in Heaven - So see to it that you obey him who is speaking to you from Heaven. (Hebrews 12:22) 
Many Protestant churches say the Apostles' Creed, saying that they believe in the communion of saints, which is understood to mean the whole community of faithful followers of Christ, living and dead, past, present and future.
The spiritual dwelling place of God in the earth is his church who live by faith. We are no longer bound to the traditions and rituals of man but released into the freedom of the Spirit (some Christians appear to think that embracing Jewish culture and tradition makes them more like Jesus – not so), and even though there can be outward Christian practises, these practices are not holy of themselves. These practices can only describe the work of God within our hearts of faith, like baptism and Communion where we bring to remembrance our oneness of a shared life with Jesus, and life-giving works of faith -like worship and prayer and the teaching of the word and our discipleship of following Jesus as the church of the firstborn, which is why Paul goes on to say.
‘So see to it that you obey him who is speaking to you from Heaven. (Hebrews 12:25) 
This encourages us to know that Heaven is always waiting to speak to earth, and no person can speak to us from Heaven other than Jesus. So let us expect to hear him speaking to us in our daily lives. That is why the Holy Spirit was sent, to tell us what Jesus is saying to us.

THE FIVE SENSES OF THE SPIRIT

THE FIVE SENSES OF THE SPIRIT 

Just as we have five physical senses we also see those senses mirrored spiritually as spiritual senses of blessing and faith. The eyes of the Lord go to and fro…I have stretched out my hand to you…These Old Testament sayings were from a pure Spirit God without a body (Yet to come in the form of Jesus)

THE SENSE OF SMELL 
Philippians 4:18 I have received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God.
2Corinthians 2:15 For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are dying on the inside (perishing).
The sense of smell is linked to the part of the brain called the olfactory system which affects our emotions and our memory. The blessing of God to us through the spiritual sense of smell is through adding a richness and a depth to our spiritual perceptions and our remembrance of certain occasions. The Bible says that our praise and prayers rise up to him like a sweet incense whereby we can bless God (Psalm 141). 

He is also blessed when we give to another person sacrificially and bless them in some way in their time of need as Paul was blessed by the Philippian church. That brings Heaven’s sweetness to the earth. Paul also says that God is blessed by the fragrance of Christ living through us that in certain ways touches the lives of people whose souls are being saved, and also in other ways touches those who are dying on the inside as we speak life into the death of their inner lives, in order to draw them into life. 

THE SENSE OF SIGHT
Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
Jesus is telling people here that when people have a blameless heart of trust in the truth of God being with them in every circumstance of their lives, that they will see God in those things even if those things are difficult and problematic. This allows people to live in the hope of God working all things together for good and not giving up in despair that he has overlooked them or forgotten them.

THE SENSE OF HEARING
Romans 10:17 faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
2Corinthians 10:5 bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
Hearing is not just a function of knowing what a person is saying, but it is an acknowledgment of who is saying it, and having a willingness to let what Jesus says to guide our lives and transform us.

THE SENSE OF TASTE
Psalm 34:8 Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. 
When we taste of the spiritual things of God that have uprightness and wisdom and mercy that he has prepared for us to eat and drink of, they bring about fulfilment and strength in our spiritual lives. We might have appetites for things that are not good for us but the things that God has prepared for us are always good and they are what we will begin to develop a hunger and thirst for. Our hunger for righteousness means that we want our will and our choices to be in alignment with the wisdom and knowledge of God. Our thirst for righteousness is for our heart and emotions to be in alignment with the desires of his heart for truth and love and mercy, and that means being satisfied with his hearts desires for us not just being gratified in our souls by what we can get for ourselves.

THE SENSE OF TOUCH
Luke 6:19 And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all.
Habakkuk 3:4 He had power flashing from His hand, and in his hand was the hiding of his power.
When the people drew near to Jesus to be close to him they were being drawn into the presence of God, and being in the presence of God brings about the touch of God. God wants us to know that he has his hand upon our lives, and the Jesus releases the power and the love and the healing touch that is hidden in his hand. So today… Let us draw near to God with a true heart and full assurance of faith… and let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works, and let us not neglect our gatherings together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. (Hebrews 10:22-24)