December 10 - Gentiles & Jesus

Read: Acts 10:34-48

And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. (Acts 10:45 ESV)

If you're reading this then chances are pretty good that you can be classified as a gentile. No, not gentle—well maybe, but a gentile. A person of non-Jewish heritage.

Christianity began with Jews. Jesus was Jewish. He came from a Jewish family, as a descendant of a Jewish King, as an answer to a promise given to the Jewish patriarch Abraham. However, his penultimate charge to his followers was to spread the Gospel to the world. The plan was always that Jesus would redeem all of humanity! All people groups! Not just the Jews.

God does not discriminate. He loves all people, in all places, in all circumstances. He longs for them to return to Him. Instead of being surprised by the differences of the people who come to Him, we should enthusiastically embrace the opportunities for diversity that the Kingdom of God affords our church family.

December 6 - Gaze Into Heaven

Read: Acts 7:51-60

But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:55, 56 ESV)

Stephen preached the truth of Christ in Jerusalem and was shaking up the status quo. Grace and power followed his message. Lives were being changed. The religious elite were not happy—Jesus was gone but his followers continued to proclaim his life and message. They drug Stephen to court, trumped up false charges, and asked him to defend himself.

Instead of defending himself Stephen preached his final sermon. It was an exegetical masterpiece as he wound his way through the Torah, Prophets, and Psalms to declare Jesus as the promised Messiah. He delivered solid truth, unflinchingly, to a mob eager for blood. And it was more than they could handle.

As he drew near to the end of his message he looked up, perhaps for a measure of reassurance and comfort. The power of the Holy Spirit came upon him and he had a supernatural vision of God and Christ there with him. The declaration of Jesus' position was more than the ruling authorities could handle.

Not only was Stephen obviously not going to be shut up, but here he was publicly declaring Jesus alive and well. He was stating outright their powerlessness. They were enraged. They attacked and killed him, stoning him to death.

The truth so offended these leaders that they were willing to forsake everything they pretended to serve in order to justify themselves. The truth of Jesus forces a reckoning. Some will accept it, many will reject it. Stephen gazed into Heaven and saw with supernatural eyes the wonders of God. I pray that the truth of Christ would prompt us all to do a little Heaven-gazing.

December 5 - Full of Grace & Power

Read: Acts 6:8-15

And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. (Acts 6:8 ESV)

Jesus' followers are supposed to be like Stephen. We are supposed to be people who are full of grace and power. People who do great wonders and signs.

Stephen was so impactful as he ministered in the name of Jesus that it bewildered the extremely religious Jewish leadership. So much so that, just as they had done to Jesus, they decided to have Stephen killed. They concocted a phony trial with false witnesses, and they besmeared his reputation through villainous slander.

Stephen remained full of grace throughout. And it was only by the power of God that he withstood their torments. In fact, the whole ordeal only served to better illuminate the power of God at work in Stephen's life.

Today when Christians talk about God's power they are often looking for something supernatural or miraculous. I believe those things can and do happen, but perhaps more often the power of God works in His followers to sustain them through difficulty. Grace and power are fully at work when a lost sinner is made to shine like a saved saint.

July 26 - Jesus and the Temple

Matthew 21:12-17

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. (Matthew 21:14 ESV)

Throughout their history the Jews had worshipped through song and sacrifice. King Solomon oversaw the construction of the first temple, where as Herod the Great was the steward of the last Jewish Temple. It had been intended as a place for the people to connect with God in profound ways. It had become something else entirely.

When Jesus arrived at the Temple it was chock full of money changers, merchants, and other swindlers. He would not tolerate it. So he threw them out in a moment of truly justified righteous indignation. The Temple had become something other than a place for repentance and prayer, but Jesus restored it to its intended use.

As he sat and taught his followers amidst the purged Temple grounds people began to bring the sick and the lame and he healed them. It was a complete turnabout for the Temple. The religious focal point of Judaism, it was no longer defunct, it was no longer a money trap meant to make the powerful wealthy, it was truly a place of connecting with God.

The Temple no longer stands. It was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Romans. However, the time had already passed for the usefulness of a material temple by then. Jesus had changed that.

Today we can connect with God anywhere we like. We are no longer limited to only visiting a holy place. In fact, Christianity has no holy places, only the holiness of God, the Son, and the Spirit. When Jesus cleansed the Temple he demonstrated that it is his work and person by which we connect with God. It is by his death. By his love. And by his strength.

January 26 - No More Temple

Read: Malachi 3:1-5, Luke 2:25-27

And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, (Luke 2:27 ESV)

In 400 B.C. Malachi prophesied that Jesus would enter the temple. Because the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70 and no longer exists it is a particularly important prophecy. In fact, this prophecy illuminates the historical window of time in which the Messiah must have came because it could not have been fulfilled after A.D. 70.

The Temple itself was the epicenter for Jewish worship for hundreds of years. Even today many modern Jews make a pilgrimage to a portion of ruins at the old Temple site known as the Wailing Wall. Among many who make the journey is the tragic misconception that being near the Wall allows them to be near to God.

In reality Jesus taught against this same idea in his day. Of course he realized, and promoted the importance of the Temple, even getting righteously angry over its frequent and flagrant misuse. But we he taught that it was just a place to meet with God. He even called it a house for prayer, and by his death and resurrection actually replaced the Temple itself.

Today, we don't need a temple Jesus is our temple. We don't go to a temple. We go to Jesus. We don't adorn a building in lavish luxuries, we seek the simplicity of a poor Jewish preacher. We don't focus our efforts and attention on a singular place, but on a singular divine person. Jesus is our way to God.

January 9 - Righteous King

Read: 2 Chronicles 29

And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord , according to all that David his father had done. In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. He brought in the priests and the Levites and assembled them in the square on the east and said to them, Hear me, Levites! Now consecrate yourselves, and consecrate the house of the Lord , the God of your fathers, and carry out the filth from the Holy Place. For our fathers have been unfaithful and have done what was evil in the sight of the Lord our God. They have forsaken him and have turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord and turned their backs. (2 Chronicles 29:2-6 ESV)

Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord , the God of Israel, in order that his fierce anger may turn away from us. My sons, do not now be negligent, for the Lord has chosen you to stand in his presence, to minister to him and to be his ministers and make offerings to him. (2 Chronicles 29:10, 11 ESV)

Hezekiah was the 14th king of Judah and the 13th successor to David. He came at a time when the Jews were in turmoil. Idolatry, rebellion, and greed had created a prevailing culture of shameless sin leading to the abandonment of the Temple. Eventually this godlessness led to God's pronounced judgement on the Jews and they were taken away into exile. But not before Hezekiah became king and asserted himself as a righteous man who longed to reestablish God's covenant with his people.

You and I find ourselves in a situation incredibly similar to Hezekiah. The prevailing mindset of our time is not one of Godliness. Idolatry, rebellion, and greed in there many forms still usher the vast population through a life of lostness and tragedy.

Jesus came to change that. He came as a King of Kings. Hezekiah's efforts did not offer a permanent solution to the sin problem of his people, but Jesus did and does. What you experienced yesterday does not have to be your experience today. Allow Christ to guide you into a new, and everlasting, covenant with him.

January 8 - The King

Read: 1 Samuel 16

But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7 ESV)

Samuel the Prophet was told by God to visit the house of Jesse and anoint a king to replace Saul who had began to live in disobedience. When the old prophet showed up he was struck by the appearance and presence of Jesse's eldest sons. However, God passed all of Jesse's sons up until Jesse reluctantly introduced his youngest boy David. Immediately God showed Samuel that David was the one meant to be king.

From that point in the story of the Jews an epic tale unfolded. The house of David arose and took a huge role in the historic shaping of the Jewish people, but it wouldn't end with just the Jews. For eventually Jesus would be born a descendant of David. Just as David, the youngest shepherd son of Jesse, was an unlikely candidate for the crown of Israel, Jesus was born into a lowly earthly family.

Often we make judgements about people based on a plethora of preconditioned variables. God looks at none of that. He sees straight into the heart of a man. Jesus was pure in heart and great in faith, though poor of wealth and small in all of the trappings society uses to measure worth and success. We follow a faith established on the person and work of God who came to live as a homeless traveling preacher. When you think about it that way it makes our methods for measuring the success of life seem oh so meager in comparison.