When we study the Bible, the living Word of God, we do so in the expectation that God will speak to us today. We may learn much of history, geography, sociology and theology from the Bible, but its primary purpose is to shape us into the image of Christ as it reveals God’s nature, purpose, plans and ways to us.

Here are some questions to ponder as we continue to study the book of Acts, based on the themes we have discussed this week:

1. Where can we see God’s hand at work in our lives? So often, we fail to see God in the ordinary and the mundane, in the routines and everyday happenings, but the book of Acts reminds us that God is at work in every situation, especially (perhaps) in those situations which seem to us like disasters. Despite martyrdom, persecution and suffering, God was working to bring many people to faith and to a saving knowledge of Himself. He is still doing this!
2. How do we live with a confidence in God’s sovereignty? We are living in uncertain times, with political instability and great catastrophes looming. Watching or listening to the news is an exercise in a quick route to depression, it seems, yet God is still in control. The juxtaposition between man’s evil and God’s purposes is made explicit in Acts 2:36 (‘God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.’) Learning to focus on God’s sovereignty and power is the only way we can have confidence in a world which is troubled and in a future that seems so uncertain.
3. How do we feel about persecution and opposition? So often, we are afraid of persecution and opposition or we believe such things are a sign of God’s displeasure. The book of Acts robustly contradicts the view that ‘everything in the garden will be rosy’ if we follow Jesus. Paul told Timothy, ‘everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted’ (2 Tim 3:12) and what is remarkable in the book is how people responded to persecution. (‘The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.’ Acts 5:41) We need to get our theology on suffering sorted, because we cannot escape suffering in this sin-stained world. The world is not perfect and it’s not a question of trying harder, doing our best or working harder.

‘But we live in a world with wars.
It’s not like it was before.
We won’t find our happy ever after here;
There’s no such thing.’ (‘Ever After’, Aaron Shust)

Only the grace and power of God can solve the world’s problems and we need to view life through the lens of eternity if we are ever to cope with suffering and persecution in the same way that the early disciples did.

4. How do we feel about our church life compared with the church life see in Acts? It’s easy to have an over-optimistic view of the early church, but there’s no doubt that it throbbed with the life of the Holy Spirit and was obedient to Jesus’s Great Commission. We need to regularly review our practices and beliefs to ensure that we are in that same position, for Jesus is unchanging (Heb 13:8) and He has poured out His Spirit on the church. We live in the same period as those early apostles, between the ascension and the Second Coming of the Lord, and therefore we can expect Him to work with the same signs and wonders that the early church saw. Our locations might be different; our methodology might change, but we need to explore Paul’s words (‘I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings’ 1 Cor 9:22-23) if we want to share in the blessings of the gospel as the early church did.

The last chapters of Acts (Acts 21:27-28:31) deal with Paul’s arrest, imprisonment and journey to Rome. We see how Paul’s arrival in Jerusalem leads to trouble (as prophesied by Agabus in Acts 21:11) and how his arrest leads to him appealing to Caesar, for he was a Roman citizen as well as a Jew. Paul defends himself in Aramaic to the crowd (Acts 22:1-21), to the Sanhedrin (Acts 23:1-10), to Felix, a local governor (Acts 24:1-27), to Festus (Felix’s successor) (Acts 25:1-12) and to King Agrippa (Acts 25:23-26:32). In each of these cases, he gives his testimony, explaining how that meeting with Jesus on the road to Damascus (also told in Acts 9:1-19) changed his life completely, giving him purpose and a vocation he cannot ignore. Later on, he testifies of God’s power and purposes to the crew on board the ship as it is about to sink (Acts 27:27-38) and ministers in power to the people of Malta (Acts 28:1-10).

Paul lived out a truth he would later expound: God is in sovereign control and He works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. (Romans 8:28) He took every opportunity which came his way – whether these seemed propitious or apparently disastrous – and believed God could use these to further His purposes. As John Stott puts it, Paul ‘was arrested in Jerusalem, subjected to endless trials, imprisoned in Caesarea, threatened with assassination by the Jews, and then nearly drowned in the Mediterranean, killed by the soldiers and poisoned by a snake! Each incident seemed to be designed to prevent him from reaching his God-planned, God-promised destination… [It is only by God’s providence] that Paul will get there.’ (commentary, P 401-402).

No amount of opposition and persecution can stop God’s plans. Job came to realise this; despite all the suffering he endured, he came to understand that ‘no purpose of yours can be thwarted.’ (Job 42:2) Howard Marshall, in the Tyndale commentary on Acts, writes, “Nothing that men do can stop the progress and ultimate victory of the gospel.”  (Tyndale commentary on Acts, P427) The truth of God’s sovereignty should fill our hearts with confidence and hope, courage and commitment. It doesn’t mean life won’t be difficult (Paul would later write of being ‘under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself’ 2 Cor 1:8), but it does mean we can face life with security and trust. We know ultimately that much of the New Testament was written from Paul’s prison in Rome. God used even that circumstance to bless the church throughout history. We can be confident that God is still working His purposes out in our individual and corporate lives. He is sovereign over all!

When I was at school, I studied A level history. One of the topics of study was the Renaissance explorers, names like Raleigh and Drake and Columbus and Vasco da Garma, who ‘sailed the ocean blue’, discovered whole new continents and greatly increased our understanding of the world. Sad to say, at the time, I failed to appreciate this topic, since it focussed so much on geography. I struggled to care about these new lands and the goods discovered there and failed to understand the importance of these explorers to the world I currently inhabit. It’s taken years for me to realise that place is a crucial part of living, that (in Eugene Peterson’s words), ‘all theology is rooted in geography.’[1]

In the book of Acts, it’s hard to escape the importance of geography, for the gospel is set in real places as well as in real people. Many of these names are well known to us today (usually in the context of holiday destinations!): Ephesus, Thessalonica, Athens, Malta, Cyprus, Rhodes, Rome all get a look in. Others may not be quite so familiar (Tarsus, Lystra, Iconium, Bithynia, for example.) Yet the fact that Christianity was established in these places as a result of the missionary journeys recorded in this book cannot be denied. When I holidayed in Malta in 2016, the evidence of Paul’s shipwreck was everywhere: St Paul’s Bay (named after him!), memorials with the words of Acts 28 inscribed on them, the sheer number of churches evidence of the thriving faith still on the island. It reminded me of the legacy one person can leave, evidence that one person really can make an impact and a difference to whole countries.

Acts 28, telling of Paul’s arrival in Malta

We need to understand the importance of location in all we do (Paul’s message to the Athenians was phrased very differently from his message to the Jews, for example) and realise also that God has determined the times and places for us to live (see Acts 17:26). When I was younger, I didn’t want to live in the Dearne Valley. I was like Jonah, wanting to be anywhere else but where God was sending me. I had grand visions of evangelism anywhere else (preferably abroad and French-speaking), but had to come to terms with the fact that God knows the best places for each one of us. Acts teaches us that God cares about the whole world and has given us a task to do, being His witnesses first of all where we are and then taking that message of salvation to the whole world. Where is He calling you to go?

[1] ‘Under the Unpredictable Plant’ (Eugene Peterson)

In our Bible study this week, we looked at the structure (or framework) of Acts. There are 28 chapters in the book, in three main sections. Acts 1-12 focus on the origins of the church, with Peter one of the main characters and Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria the main geographical focus. Acts 13-20 focus on the missionary journeys of Paul (whose conversion is told in Acts 9) and the remaining chapters (Acts 21-28) focus on Paul’s defence after his arrest and his journey to Rome.

Throughout the book, we see Luke showing us how the key verse (‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)) is worked out from Jerusalem into the whole world. Both Peter and Paul, along with other disciples (John, Philip, Stephen, Barnabas, Silas and Timothy, for example), are shown to do miraculous signs and wonders (healings, exorcisms, raising of the dead) through the power of the Holy Spirit, but there is also a strong emphasis on the preaching of God’s word, showing how Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah and is God’s means of salvation to the whole world (‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.’ (Acts 4:12))

The book is also important in showing us how persecution and growth often go hand in hand. Throughout Acts, we see that the disciples rejoiced that they were counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. (Acts 5:41) Despite the martyrdom of key believers (Stephen in Acts 7 and James in Acts 12) and persecution which forced believers to leave the comfort of their homes (Acts 8:4-8, Acts 11:19), the gospel spread, fulfilling Christ’s prophetic words to his disciples while he was still on earth (see Matt 5:10-11, John 15:18-20). The latter part of the book shows us something of the fulfilment of God’s word in the life of Paul (‘I will show him how much he must suffer for my name’ (Acts 9:16)) as he is imprisoned for his faith, yet we also see how he seized every opportunity to give his testimony before a variety of leaders (Festus, Herod Agrippa, Felix etc.) As Howard Marshall puts it, “Nothing that men do can stop the progress and ultimate victory of the gospel.” (Howard Marshall, Tyndale commentary on Acts, P427)

We also had fun shaking jars of double cream until we made butter.

Plus there was lots of other things to do…

Transformation is all around us. The caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly… Cooking is one way in which we see transformation happen every day. We take raw ingredients (some of which would not be good for us if eaten raw!) and by cooking we transform them into culinary delights!

Simon and Charlotte from Worsbrough Mill Museum and Park supported our Fun Day today and gave us the opportunity to make pizzas from the flour made at the mill. They arrived early to set up their wood oven:

Throughout the day, groups of ten children made their own pizzas which they got to eat at lunchtime.

A big ‘Thank You’ to Simon and Charlotte for teaching us so much about flour and for giving us lovely pizzas to eat!

Just as cooking transforms raw ingredients into culinary delights, Jesus offers us transformed lives, for Paul tells us that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation! (2 Cor 5:17) Has your life been transformed by God?