Paul wants us to be wise and not unwise (Eph 5:15). He names areas where wisdom needs to be seen: in our attitudes to time and to what we actually spend our time doing. He urges us to ‘make the most of every opportunity’ (Eph 5:17), which older translations translate as ‘redeeming the time.’  Time is valuable and God wants us to make the most of our time. We live in the day of salvation, in the time of God’s favour (2 Cor 6:2), at a time when the days are evil (Eph 5:16), but there are still many opportunities to share God’s truth with people. We need to look at time and see how we can use the time we have wisely to serve God, for all of us have the same amount of time each day; it’s a question of how we choose to use it. Stephen Covey said, ‘The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.’  This means we need to schedule time to be with God, with our families and with our spiritual family.

We need wisdom also in what we actually do, in our actions. Paul urges us not to get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. (Eph 5:18) There’s nothing wrong with pleasurable activities or relaxation per se, but we have to be careful not to take things to excess. Debauchery is defined as ‘excessive indulgence in sex, alcohol, or drugs.’ One thing so easily leads to another, and there is no place in the Christian life for this kind of excessive indulgence. Instead of seeking to fill the emptiness in our lives through these things, we need to be filled with the Spirit – not just as a one-off event, but as a continuing, daily process.

When the Holy Spirit fills us, there will be spiritual talk; there will be music; there will be songs; there will be a love for God’s word; there will be thankfulness. These spiritual blessings flow from the blessing of the Holy Spirit. (Eph 5:18-20) When the Holy Spirit fills us, we are filled with boldness. The early apostles were able to speak the word of God boldly after they were filled (Acts 4:31), as was Saul (Acts 9:28). One of the characteristics of the early church was this boldness, which came from the power of the Spirit: ‘So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders’ (Acts 14:3), we are told.

The key to knowing the fulness of the blessing of the Holy Spirit is to keep in step with the Spirit (Gal 5:25). We must neither run ahead nor lag behind, but recognise our dependence on Him daily.

This morning we continued the series ‘Battles & Blessings’, looking at Eph 5:1-20 and the blessing of the Holy Spirit, God’s precious gift to us. In this chapter, Paul reminds the Ephesians that the new life they have received in Jesus Christ needs to be reflected in their own everyday lives.(see Eph 4:17, Eph 5:3-4, 11). He says that sexual immorality, impurity and greed are ‘improper for God’s people’ (Eph 5:3) – such things are not part of this new set of clothes we have been given. Our new identity is as ‘God’s holy people’ (Eph 5:3). Obscenity, foolish talk and coarse joking have no place in the lives of God’s people. Such things are ‘fruitless’, and God wants us to be people who bear much fruit. (John 15:5) One of the ways we reflect God’s nature is to bear the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, to have evidence of this fruit in how we live. (Gal 5:22-23)

We are called to live out our new identity as children of God, children of the light (see John 1:4-5, 1 John 1:5, 1 Thess 5:5-8). The spiritual fruit which the Holy Spirit grows in our lives reflects God’s nature. God is good (Ps 119:68); He is righteous (Ps 48:10, Ps 116:5); He is the truth. (John 14:6) Jesus is the Prince of Peace (Is 9:6) God is patient, being slow to anger and rich in mercy. (2 Pet 3:9, Ps 103:8) He is kind (Rom 2:4). He is faithful and gentle with His people, remembering that we’re only made from dust, not snuffing out the smouldering wick or crushing the bruised reed. (Ps 103:13-14, Is 42:3) We are being called to grow fruit that’s entirely in keeping with God’s nature and character. The family resemblance is meant to be outworked in our lives so that this spiritual fruit is seen as evidence of our true identity as children of the light, children reflecting what our Father in heaven is like.

This is not done through self-effort or human endeavour; God gives freely of His Spirit to us and Paul urges us to be filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18). This blessing is available to all of God’s children; it is God’s express desire and purpose that we are all filled with the Spirit. Paul has made it clear that all Christians have the Spirit of God (Eph 1:13, Rom 8:9) The question is, how much of us does the Holy Spirit have? Are we completely surrendered to Him? Do we rely on Him to guide and lead us or are we busy living independent lives? Luke 11:9-13 makes it plain that our responsibility is to ask, seek and knock. We have a heavenly Father who longs to give freely of His Spirit. Without this blessing, we will become discouraged and demotivated, but we can be confident that as we ask, seek and knock, God will open the floodgates of heaven and pour out His Spirit on us.

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)