Understanding & Perceiving
Isaiah 6:9-10 talks about hearing and seeing but not understanding or perceiving, and it is true that the response to hearing and seeing can be vastly different. This was the case in Jesus’ lifetime, when opinion was so sharply divided about His words and actions (John 12:37) and remained true about Paul throughout the book of Acts (Acts 13:42-45, Acts 14:1-2, Acts 17:4-5, Acts 28:24). We may all see and hear the same thing, but our response to this will not be the same. Not all will understand or perceive spiritual truth.
My younger granddaughter has just started to walk to places rather than being transported in a pushchair. She is obviously much smaller than me, and her pace is very slow, but I find walking with her to be a revelation, opening up a world of understanding and perceiving. Alert to every sound, she often stops and asks about it. Her keen eyes spot daisies, buttercups and dandelions as we walk; she stops to pick them as an offering to this wonderful world of nature. Every puddle is jumped in, every twig investigated. “It’s a fishing rod!” she will announce, and we’re transported into the world of imagination as she fishes for leaves, happily stabbing fallen leaves with her new-found ‘rod’ and walking with it to prod and poke the delights she finds en route.
This kind of walk, slow though it may be in terms of reaching a destination, reminds me of Isaiah’s words. Sometimes we need to slow down and see again what the world looks like from a child’s vantage point. We need to slow down to hear God’s words, to meditate on His actions, to ponder, reflect, delight.
The two-year gap between sisters shows me many things. Her older sister is now running ahead on these walks, already impatient to reach her destination. Most of us soon learn to run on, to walk without seeing the wild flowers except as weeds, dodging puddles as an inconvenience, not a delight. I prefer the toddler’s approach. I feel it’s an aid to understanding and perceiving.
And The Journey Continues…
Many have felt that the book of Acts ends somewhat ambiguously. True, there is a sense of climax in that Paul has finally arrived in Rome, the capital city of the vast Roman empire, thus fulfilling Jesus’ command to go to the ends of the earth with the gospel. (Acts 1:8) There is a sense of symmetry in that he meets with the Jews in that city and offers them the chance to respond to the gospel message before recognising that their rejection fulfils prophecy (Is 6:9-10) and paves the way for his ministry to the Gentiles, a pattern we have seen repeatedly throughout his missionary journeys and throughout his exposition to the Romans (Romans 9-11). But we have many unanswered questions, including what happened to Paul himself and what was the result of his appeal to Caesar.
Howard Marshall feels this is deliberate: “The fate of Paul is secondary to that of the gospel. The final picture is of Paul preaching to the Gentiles the same message which he had preached throughout Acts with boldness and without hindrance. All the emphasis lies on that last phrase. The implication is that the charges against Paul were false and that God backed up his proclamation. Nothing that men can do can stop the progress and ultimate victory of the gospel.” (Howard Marshall, ‘Acts’, P 427) Tom Wright makes a similar point, reminding us that the real hero of Acts is not Paul but Jesus, and the journey of the gospel continues to this very day: “The journey is ours, the trials and vindications are ours, the sovereign presence of Jesus is ours, the story is ours to pick up and carry on. Luke’s writing, like Paul’s journey, has reached its end, but in his end is our beginning.” (Tom Wright, ‘Acts For Everyone Pt 2’, P 249)
Just as Luke told us right at the start of Acts that this was a continuation of the story of all Jesus did and taught (Acts 1:1), so too we realise at the end of Acts that this story continues today. We are part of that story; the commission to be witnesses to Jesus is still ours. Where will this story take you?
Unchained Words
Freedom of speech has long been at the heart of civilisations. It is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction, and has long been recognised as a freedom worth fighting for. On many occasions, totalitarian governments have sought to abolish freedom of speech, locking up those whose opinions vary from the ruling view of ‘reality’, which, as we all know, can change according to political, philosophical or religious dogma very quickly. In recent times, it seems as if this freedom continues to be under attack; any view on lockdowns or vaccination, for example, which does not fit with the Government’s views on these subjects seems to risk unpleasant opprobrium, especially on social media.
The book of Acts ends with Paul under military custody, house arrest in effect, but we are told that he ‘proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!’ (Acts 28:31) Paul may have known the pain and indignity of physical chains, but he went on to say, ‘But God’s word is not chained.’ (2 Tim 2:9) We can be thankful for this. History teaches us that Christians and others have been imprisoned, tortured and even martyred because they spoke out against lies and for truth, the truth of the Gospel which does not change, however much our worldviews may alter. Yet in all circumstances, God’s word is not chained; it is not bound. As Isaiah said, God’s word ‘will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.’ (Is 55:11) May we have the same confidence as Paul to proclaim the kingdom of God and teach about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance, valuing every freedom we have and cherishing and defending freedom of speech whenever we can.
Needs versus Wants
Paul tells us that ‘all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.’ (2 Tim 3:16-17) This does not mean, however, that Scripture answers all our questions; there are many questions we have about which the Bible is frustratingly silent! In Acts 28, for example, after years of imprisonment and journeying, we still do not know what happened about Paul’s appeal to Caesar or about his relationship with the Roman church. This highlights for us that what we need to know compared to what we would like to know is often very different.
The difference between needs and wants is one which runs through the Bible. Phil 4:19 assures us ‘my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.’ Jesus urged us not to worry about food or clothing: ‘your heavenly Father knows that you need them,’ He reminded us, telling us that if we put God first, ‘all these things will be given to you as well.’ (Matt 6:32-33) We would be naïve, however, to assume that the many verses which remind us of God’s lavish generosity (e.g. Ps 84:11, James 1:17, 1 John 5:14-15) give us carte blanche to demand ridiculously selfish things from Him. There is a difference between what is needful and what is simply our desire, and we do well, like Paul, to learn contentment in God. (Phil 4:10-13)
The Need For The Prophets
Christians do not live in a vacuum. We may wish we did, but the truth is that we live in the world – a world God created, a wonderful world marred by sin and our many wrong choices. We are not unaffected by all that happens around us; we are not immune to sickness, fear, troubles and temptations.
The prophets operated in the real world, being affected by injustice, war and judgment just as everyone else was. But they also lived with one foot firmly in God’s kingdom, with their eyes firmly fixed on an invisible but benevolent God. They proclaimed God’s sovereignty, love, mercy, holiness and judgment in the real, messy, uncomfortable world. Their vision of what life in God’s kingdom, where God rules, may appear hopelessly utopian to us, but its truth has stood the test of time. Nations have come and gone; invincible superpowers lie relegated to the history books. God remains on the throne.
What does this have to do with us? Everything, I would argue. We live in messy, difficult, frightening times, when the whole world seems obsessed with a coronavirus which actually appears little different from many others we have previously faced, despite the rhetoric and prevalence of fear and the measures taken to deal with it. We live under threats and loss of freedoms, dictated to by a government whose motives seem mixed and whose methods ring so many alarm bells that at times the sound feels deafening. More than ever, the courageous example of the prophets, whose lone voices cry out to us from a large proportion of Scripture (over a quarter of the Bible is dedicated to these men), is needed. Their passion for God’s ways, their refusal to ‘buy into‘ the worldview of their time, and their hope in the sovereignty and reality of God provide anchors for every troubled time.
Don’t dismiss the prophets as irrelevant, eccentric and unimportant, but learn from them, as we are urged to learn from all parts of Scripture, and understand that God is still speaking through His prophets to the church and to the world today.
Not Our Own
Slavery and the trafficking of slaves is, alas, a modern problem as much as ever it was. In 2004, 23 cockle pickers drowned in Morecambe Bay; they had been trafficked and lured by the promise of good jobs in Britain, but were forced to work seven days a week for just £10 a day. There are many more shocking tales of such injustices and it is thought that worldwide, slavery affects between 25 and 45 million people. Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labour or commercial sex act; this includes forced marriages, sex trafficking, forced labour and child labour.
Though we may not be aware of it, we may be profiting from slavery in the services we use (e.g. in retail, in the clothes we buy and so on); we need to be aware and to buy aware. This problem is not something that is only relevant from a historical point of view; it is of stark relevance to our everyday lives.
We may well feel, however, that we are free people and this topic has little relevance for us in the UK, but the past year has shown us how easily freedoms can be removed from us (e.g. what we can do, where we can go, whom we can see, whether we can go to work or not.) The Government and psychologists in SAGE have used social and behavioural interventions to control and direct behaviour, playing on feelings of duty, guilt and fear to inculcate the ‘acceptable’ level of behaviour in people. We can easily become slaves to fear; people are finding it increasingly difficult to ‘go back to normal’, even when restrictions are eased, because of the fear aroused by these methods.
We can also be slaves to our desires, again often exacerbated by advertising and the media. The idea of personal liberation can, if we are not careful, be used by those skilled in manipulation to captivate – an age-old problem as Genesis 3:4-5 makes plain.
Paul reminds us in Rom 6:16 that when we offer ourselves to someone as obedient slaves, we are slaves of the one we obey – whether we are slaves to sin or to obedience. Christ has died to set us free (Gal 5:1); as Christians, we are freed from the penalty of sin (1 Cor 5:21) and freed from a fear of death (Heb 2:14-15). Life is precious and valuable (euthanasia and abortion are wrong because both treat life as disposable), but Jesus made it plain that we must lose our lives to find them (Matt 10:39, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24). We have to understand that Jesus laid down His life for us and that we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. (1 John 3:16)
To live in fear, guilt, shame or bondage to our desires is to be enslaved. Jesus came to set us free not only from the penalty of sin but from the power of sin, so that now we can choose who rules us. Rom 6:13 reminds us that we have a choice now to offer ourselves to God; 1 Cor 6:19-20 reminds us that we are not our own but have been bought by God. Just as the slave could choose to continue to serve their master out of love (Ex 21:5-6), so too we can choose to be a slave of God and therefore know true freedom.
