SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/20/2017
10:41 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2
The Persecution Manifest
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 4:1-4
Message
of the verses: “1 As they were
speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the
Sadducees came up to them, 2 being greatly disturbed because they were teaching
the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. 3 And they
laid hands on them and put them in jail until the next day, for it was already
evening. 4 But many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number
of the men came to be about five thousand.”
We have been looking at reasons why
Peter and John were irritating the priests as they were preaching to the crowd
after the healing of a man who was lame.
Now the major problem that these Jewish priests and the captain of the
temple guards was, was that they were telling the crowd that Jesus was raised
from the dead. The Jewish leaders had
executed Jesus as a blasphemer, and now these men were telling people that He
is alive, that He is their resurrected Messiah, and they did not want to hear
any of it. The Sadducees did not believe
in the resurrection of anyone as they only believed in the first five chapters
of the Old Testament. They did not
believe in angels or anything supernatural.
I don’t know what they thought of creation or about Enoch going to
heaven without dying.
“The idea of a general resurrection
was an apocalyptic concept with all sorts of messianic overtones. Messianic ideas among the Jews of that day
meant revolt, overthrow of the foreign overlords, and restoration of the
Davidic kingdom…The notes of Peter’s sermon alarmed them: resurrection, Author of life, and a new
Moses. There were revolutionary
ideas. The movement must not spread. It must be nipped in the bud. (John B.
Polhill, The New American Commentary:
Acts [Nashville: Broadman, 1992],
140).”
Now because the Jews could not
tolerate the apostles’ teaching they laid hands on them and put them in jail
until the next day as by now it was evening.
When we looked at Peter’s sermon in chapter two we remarked that the
sermon must have been a lot longer than what Luke put into that portion of Acts
and this sermon also must have been longer too.
Because it was evening the Sanhedrin could not have a trial, and so they
put them in jail for the night.
Putting them in jail did not stop
people from believing as many came to know the Lord because of this sermon. MacArthur writes “Five thousand represents
the cumulative number of men in the Jerusalem congregation, not those added at
this time. This is the last mention of a
specific number in Acts; from this time on the church grew too fast to keep an
accurate count. Luke does, however, not
the church’s continued growth (5:14; 6:7; 9:31; 12:24; 16:5; 19:20; 28:31).”
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: Peter
gave out the gospel message in this sermon, as he was willing to tell others
the good news of the gospel. I love it
when God gives me the opportunity to tell someone the good news of the gospel
of Jesus Christ. There are few things if
any in this life that give me more pleasure.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to
trust the Lord to bring to me “divine appointments” in order to spread the good
news that Jesus Christ died for who the Lord directs me to.
Answer
to yesterday’s Bible question: “Andrew”
(John 1:41).
Today’s
Bible question: “Where was Paul when he
had a vision calling him to Macedonia?”
Answer
in our next SD.
9/20/2017
11:04 AM
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