March 19, 2026 – The Other Gift the Gentiles Receive — Acts #34

David Chupp Acts ,

March 19, 2026 – The Other Gift the Gentiles Receive — Acts #34
Acts 10:9-43

Last week, we continued our discussion of the story of the centurion Cornelius and Peter, their two visions, and how God chose this moment to finally get Peter to understand the lesson he had been trying to teach His people for over a thousand years.   And the lesson that was so hard for them to grasp was this:  “God’s message of love and grace is for all people, Jew and Gentile, and He seeks to establish a covenant with all people who are willing.  

When God created people, he did not intend any divisions.  People were to be one, united in Him.  God told them to be fruitful and fill the earth, but they congregated in one city to make a name for themselves.  God wanted them to live in unity in Him, but they sought their unity in themselves.  They built a tower in Babel.  And because of their sin, God had to divide their languages to force them to scatter so that they would fill the earth as He intended.

And each of these people groups created idols for themselves, false gods that they worshiped.  Each nation had its own gods to worship.  You are familiar with the gods of Egypt (they had over 1000).  We know from scripture that the Canaanites worshipped Baal, the Moabites worshipped Chemosh, the Ammonites worshipped Milkom or Molech, and the Sidonians worshipped Ashtoreth (Numbers 21:29, 1 Kings 11:5-7).

Most nations other than the Jews worshipped a pantheon of gods, each performing different functions.  One was responsible for the sunshine, another for the rain, one for war, another for the crops.  

So in Acts 10, Peter finally realizes that Yehovah is not only the God of the Jews but also accepts all other people.  It is hard for us to understand just how radical an idea this is.  The idea of a single god over all things and over all people was unthinkable.  So when word gets back to Jerusalem of what happened with Peter, they need some explanation.  And the first part of Acts 11 provides a good summary for us of our past 3 weeks.

Acts 11:1-9. Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” But Peter began and explained it to them in order: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me. Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’

Acts 11:10-18  This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’ As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

Don’t miss that, when the passage begins, they’re upset with Peter.  “What was he thinking, going to the house of a Gentile?  And preaching to the Gentiles?  He is just wasting his time.”But then Peter tells his story of the remarkable visions and what happened at Cornelius’ house, how they had a similar experience to the disciples’ at Pentecost. So Peter tells them, “If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”

 And the Jerusalem leaders’ reaction when they found out that these Gentiles had received the Holy Spirit?

Acts 11:18a   When they heard these things they fell silent…

They were shocked.  Something they thought unthinkable had just happened.  The God of the Jews, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who brought their forefathers out of Egypt,  the God of Moses and David — their God, Yehovah, was God of the Gentiles also.  One God for all people.  All people united under one God.  They were speechless.  And after having a moment to process all of this:

Acts 11:18b  …and they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

Now, note that Peter’s review of the events in Acts 11:1-18 mentions two gifts that are given to the Gentiles in Cornelius’ home.  First, there was the gift of the Holy Spirit that we talked about last week.  Did you notice the second gift?

“God has granted repentance that leads to life.”  God has given the gift of repentance.  Does that sound odd to you, that God gifted them with repentance?  You might expect that to say “God freely gave them forgiveness”.  Because we often talk about repenting as if it is something we do ourselves.  We repent, and God gives forgiveness.   But let’s look at how the Bible talks about repentance.

I remember once seeing a preacher demonstrate the concept of repentance by walking one direction that he called “the path of sin”, and then stopping and turning around to walk back the other way “towards God”.  He said that this is repentance.  It is not just stopping on the road to sin, but turning around and walking back towards God.   It is that moment of stopping and then turning around and taking that first step back to God that I want to look at.

The Greek word for repentance is metanoeo.  The word is composed of meta (meaning “after” or “beyond”, implying change) and noieō (meaning “to perceive” or “think”).  To repent is to change your thinking and change your direction.  And what the pastor’s physical example of turning around really doesn’t communicate well is what happens in the moment before he turns.  What happens to cause the stop and change of direction?  

Last week, we read a portion of the prophecy of Joel in the second chapter that told of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on all flesh.  Let me read a few earlier verses in that chapter.

Joel 2:12-13  “Yet even now,” declares Yehovah, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to Yehovah your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.”

This word ‘return’ here is the Hebrew “shuv”, which is repentance, turning around and turning back towards God.  In Joel’s day, people would express their grief by tearing their clothes, putting on sackcloth, and sitting in ashes.  But here, God is asking them not just to show signs of their grief, but to have true weeping and mourning, being grieved over the sins they committed.  Grief and remorse over sin is the first step in repentance.  David expresses this in his psalm of repentance following his sin with Bathsheba:

Psalm 51:16-17   For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

David knew that what God wanted from him as a response to his sin was not simply another animal sacrifice.  What was necessary was for David to be heartbroken over his own sin.  This is much more than regret. This is brokenness before God over his sin. 

We should grieve our sin.  Far too often, what I see happening is people grieving another person’s sin.  Oh, I have done it too.  Perhaps you’ve said something like this:  “I can’t believe he could be so heartless.”  “How can people be so mean?”  “How could they ever think that God would approve of that behavior?” 

I caught myself saying this next one not too long ago, after seeing yet another example of someone trying to scam a friend out of money.  I said,  “God must have a special place for people who deceive older people and steal their money.”   Have you ever said that? 

Well, God does have a special place for those people.  It is the same place he has for you when you sin. It is the same special place he has for me when I sin.  It is a special place in the heart of God where he wants all of us to come to terms with our own sin, not the sins of others.  God desperately wants us to understand what we have done wrong so that we can turn around and not do it anymore.  He wants us to be true followers of His, walking on His path.  

So repentance is coming to the moment when we stop and consider our own sin, and then truly grieve it to the point that we never want to commit it again. We are heartbroken over our sin.  So we then turn around.  How do you get to that point?

The Scriptures tell us the answer.  Repentance is a gift from God.  That is what the people in Jerusalem were saying:

Acts 11:18b And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

God has given the gift of repentance to the Gentiles also.  Perhaps this idea that repentance is a gift is best seen in this passage in 2 Timothy:

2 Timothy 2:24-26   And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

We are to pray for our evil opponents, that “God may perhaps grant them repentance.”  Paul instructs Timothy to ask God to give the gift of repentance to these evil people who oppose him.  (By the way, if you have someone oppressing you, this passage is a great prayer.) 

Someone who sins must first reach the critical point where they stop what they are doing and change their mind, realizing how wrong their rebellion against God is.  Then they must grieve their sin, mourn their mistakes, and turn around, desiring never to walk that way again.  We can’t get to that point on our own. We need God to lead us to that point.  That is the gift of repentance. 

So we must pray that God will lead us to repentance.  We must ask God to soften our hearts to the hardness of our sin.  We need to ask God to break our hearts for the things that break His heart. And let me tell you, the first thing He will do is break your heart about your own sins. 

And I can’t leave this passage without quickly pointing out another important point.

Acts 11:18b  …and they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

We are part of the “also.”  Most of us were not born of the chosen people of God.  We are not Jewish.  We can’t trace our family tree back to Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham.  God chose the people of Abraham as His chosen ones, the ones to carry His message to the world.  We were not born into that family.  As Peter told the Gentile believers in Jesus in Mesopotamia:

1 Peter 2:10   Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Once we were excluded, but now we are included.  We weren’t born into this group of chosen people, but, as Paul says in Romans 11, we have been grafted in.  We have been adopted into God’s chosen people.  We are the “also” who are now the chosen, as Peter tells these Gentiles:

1 Peter 2:9-10    But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

God is the giver of all good gifts. He gives us life, he gives us grace, He gives us love and acceptance.  He gives us forgiveness through the gift of His Son dying in our place, and this through the gift of repentance.  It is God’s gift to us to bring us into His way of thinking, to a brokenness over our sin. Repentance requires mourning over our sin.

This is the season of Lent.  It is a time of reflection as we prepare to celebrate the greatest gift: our savior, Jesus, going to the cross in our place and rising from the dead, so that we may follow him in how we live and how we are raised to life.  The ashes we receive on Ash Wednesday remind us of the people of the Old Testament, who showed their grief by tearing their clothes and sitting in ashes.  It is about repentance.  Have you ever reached the point of brokenness for your sins?  Let us all pray to our Father and ask Him to break our hearts for our sin that breaks his heart. Then we can put that sin behind us as we turn and walk with our Father in His path.

March 7, 2026 –  God Seals the Deal — Acts #33

David Chupp Acts , ,

March 7, 2026 –  God Seals the Deal — Acts #33
Acts 10:34-43

For several weeks, we have been looking at the story of Cornelius, the centurion, and Peter in Acts 10.  It is a huge moment in God’s plan to redeem the world.

First, we looked back at Jesus’ first attempt to teach this to his disciples, with the first centurion in Matthew 8, and at how he tried to teach it again in his final words before ascending to heaven.  Then, 10 years later, God sends Cornelius a vision to send for Peter, who had a message for him.  So Cornelius gathered friends and family to hear Peter’s message.

Meanwhile, God uses another dramatic vision to finally convince Peter to abandon the idea that Gentiles were unclean and had to convert to Judaism to be accepted by God.  And Peter does come to Cornelius’ home, and here is the message he has for them:

Acts 10:34   “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

And as I said last week, I can almost hear God speak, “Well, it’s about time, Peter!” God called Israel His chosen nation for a purpose that He revealed at Mount Sinai more than a thousand years before Jesus came.  The purpose was to be priests to the world.  But they kept God to themselves and said you must become like us to worship God. So part of Jesus’ reason for coming was to correct this misconception.  But they were still unable to abandon their prejudice and fulfill their mission for the rest of the world.  That is why God is doing all this in Acts 10.  And when Peter arrives at Cornelius’ house and finds the house full of Gentiles waiting to hear his message, here is what he says:

Acts 10:34-43   So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. 
They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

Peter makes 4 important points here:

  1. Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit and power.
  2. He did many good things and healed many who were oppressed by evil.
  3. They killed him, but God raised him from the dead (and we saw him)
  4. Jesus commanded us to preach to the people.

This is Peter’s testimony, giving witness to what he saw himself.  Now, when we give our testimony, we usually talk about the good things Jesus did, and we always talk about his crucifixion and ascension.   And we may even talk about his command to us to spread the word.  But I wonder how many times we include that first point Peter made, that Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit? 

We know that happened, but I don’t think we understand the importance as much as Peter did. Peter has not only seen Jesus anointed by the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, but Peter was also anointed by the Holy Spirit.  At Pentecost, God poured out his Spirit on those disciples.  And we talked about that turning point in their lives.  The difference it made, taking these scared young men hiding in a room and making them bold witnesses for Jesus, publicly preaching and healing.  That is the difference the Holy Spirit makes.  So to Peter, this anointing of Jesus was an important fact.

And that fourth point, “Jesus commanded us to preach to the people,” is what this section of Acts is all about.  To whom, Peter, were you commanded to preach?

Matthew 28:19-20 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Well, here is the Great Commission, the command Jesus gave before ascending to heaven. And it is a command, not a suggestion.  Which people does the command say?  Just the Jews?  No, it says all nations.  All people.  That is the lesson Peter finally understood 10 years later in Acts 10.  The lesson that Israel didn’t understand for 1400 years.  

But look what happens next.   Peter’s sermon gets interrupted after his fourth point.  We will never know what Peter was going to say next.  And it is God who interrupts Peter’s sermon.  God doesn’t wait for Peter to finish his outline.  (By the way, anytime God, if you want to interrupt me, that is perfectly okay with me.)  And here, God interrupts in a very dramatic fashion. 

Acts 10:44-46   While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. 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. For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. 

So look at the scene here.  Suddenly, these people listening to Peter became filled with God’s Holy Spirit.  And they start speaking in different languages.    Do you see what God is doing?  He is showing Peter the day of Pentecost happening again.   The Holy Spirit comes and is evidenced by these tongues, just as on Pentecost in Jerusalem.  But there is one big difference.  These people are Gentiles. 

The greatest day of the manifestation of God’s Spirit on humanity is happening again.   Except this time it is with people who would have been arrested if they had entered into the temple area on the last Pentecost.  As we have discussed before, the Jews said Gentiles were forbidden to approach the place of God, under penalty of death.

Here is one of the actual notices placed on the wall, the 4.5-foot barrier that kept Gentiles out of the temple.   It was discovered by archeologists in 1871 and is now on display in a museum in Istanbul.  It says, “No foreigner is to enter within this wall around the temple and enclosure.  Whoever is caught will be responsible for his ensuing death.”

They said Gentiles can not approach God.  But here in Acts 10, God has the last word.  He says, yes, they can be accepted by me, even if not by you.  God says, “You won’t let them approach my temple, but I will approach them myself, and I will make them my temple.” This pouring out of God’s Spirit on Gentiles is an undeniable proof of God’s acceptance. 

Can you imagine it from Peter’s point of view?   Why does God pour out his Holy Spirit with tongues just as he did at Pentecost?  Because he doesn’t want Peter or anyone else to miss it.  It is the same thing, the same experience. Gentiles who seek God are no different than Jews who seek God.  

And again, this is not late-breaking news.  God didn’t change his mind about Gentiles on this day.  This was his plan all along.  It was clearly prophesied in Joel:

Joel 2:28-29   And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.
 Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

Who will he pour His Spirit out on?  God said he would pour out his Spirit on all flesh.  On everyone!  Peter even quoted this same passage from Joel in his sermon on the day of Pentecost.  But when he quoted it then, he assumed that everyone meant ‘everyone of the Jews.’  That is the way it had been understood for 800 years.  But God is putting the finishing touches on this lesson.  Everyone means everyone.  Even the servants.  Even the women. Even the Gentiles.  On all people.  Joel said this 800 years before Peter was born.  But the understanding does not come until here in Acts 10.  And how does Peter respond?

Acts 10:44-48   Then Peter declared, “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days.

Peter says, “I can’t argue with God.  If these people are receiving the Holy Spirit in the same way that the other disciples and I did on Pentecost, then obviously God has proven his point.”  The work of the Holy Spirit before him is the evidence of God’s approval. They are ready for that next step, baptism.  The same next step in Act 2 at Pentecost.  Here is what Peter said in Acts 2 when the Spirit came on Pentecost:

Acts 2:38-39   And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

Repent and be baptized, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  It was true for the 3000 Jews who were baptized on that day in Acts 2, and it is true for all of the Gentiles gathered in Cornelius’ home here in Acts 10.  And it is true for us today.  If you read the New Testament closely, you will notice that the order is not consistent, but it always follows the same 3 steps: repentance, baptism, and receiving the Holy Spirit.   Those in Acts 2 were baptized and then received the Spirit. These, in Acts 10, received the Spirit and were then baptized.  The order does not matter, but it is a package deal.

When you repent and accept Jesus as your Lord and the King of your life, as your savior, then you receive the Spirit.  You can call it a baptism of the Spirit if you want, like the picture of the Spirit being poured out on everyone that Joel uses, or you can say the gift of the Spirit, as we see in the New Testament many times.  But it is the same.  Because when you receive Jesus, you receive the Spirit.   It is an initial blessing and a universal blessing for all who believe.  Paul says it this way:

Colossians 2:9-10  “For in him [Jesus] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

When you receive Jesus, since the fullness of deity dwells in Jesus, you are filled with His Spirit.  And if Christ dwells within us by his Spirit, then what more can God add to that?   If you are in Christ, the Holy Spirit already dwells in you. The question is: do we follow the Spirit? Do we listen to Him?  Or does He dwell in some small closet of ours, locked away and ignored?  

We all have the spirit, but not all of us are filled with the spirit.  We fill our lives with other things that take priority over the Spirit of God within us.  We pay attention to other voices.  We follow other paths.  Receiving the Spirit is a one-time event when you repent and commit to Jesus.  Being filled with the Spirit is a continual process of letting the Holy Spirit have His way in our lives, filling every corner of our lives, and changing the way we live.

That is why you see commands in the Bible to be filled with the Spirit.  But there are no New Testament commands to be baptized by the Spirit, for again, if you are in Christ, his Spirit is with you.  We are all baptized in the Spirit, but we are only filled with the Spirit as we allow the Spirit to have his way with us. 

Paul says in Ephesians 4 that we can grieve the Holy Spirit when we sin, by how we talk or how we act.  Our response to that is to seek to be filled more with the Spirit through repentance and a renewed effort to listen to and follow the Spirit.

The church in Corinth provides a good example of this.   Paul is clear that they had all received the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:13  For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

He then describes that they had been enriched by all spiritual gifts.  Yet in that first letter, Paul rebukes them for being unspiritual, that is, not being filled with the Spirit.  In that letter, he shows them that the evidence of being filled with the Spirit is not the exercise of gifts (which they had in abundance) but the fruit of the Spirit (in which they were found lacking).  They had been baptized and gifted by the Spirit but were not filled by the Spirit.

So if you are in Christ, you have received the Holy Spirit.  But the important question is: “Are you filled with the Spirit?”   (Warning: personal opinion here — as usual, feel free to disagree with me — I have friends who differ with me here and we love each other.)  Now, some believe that if you have not spoken in tongues, then you have not received nor been filled with the Spirit.  But in all of the book of Acts, only 3 groups who received the Spirit spoke in Tongues.   (Acts 2 at Pentecost, here in Acts 10, and a group in Acts 19.)    Speaking in tongues is but one of many gifts mentioned in Corinthians 12, and nowhere does the Scripture call it an indispensable sign of the Spirit. 

So what is the evidence of the fullness of the Spirit within you?  How do you know you are spirit-filled?  The evidence is not the gifts of the spirit but the fruit of the spirit. The only passage in Scripture in which Paul describes the consequences of being filled with the Spirit is Ephesians 5:18-21.

Ephesians 5:18-21  And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Paul says the consequences of being filled with the Spirit are not gifts like tongues or prophecy, but are all moral qualities — how you behave.

Why does he mention being drunk with alcohol as a contrast to being Spirit-filled?   It is all about what you cede control of your life to.  We all know the effect alcohol has.  In sufficient quantities, you lose your inhibitions. You lose emotional control, and if you continue, you lose control of your motor abilities (you can’t walk straight), and then finally lose control of your consciousness.

Paul is saying, ” Don’t give up your control of yourself to alcohol; give up control of yourself to the Spirit.”  When we follow the path the Spirit leads, then we act like the person described here.   We could spend hours discussing the 4 individual behavioral results Paul sees as evidence of being spirit-filled: how we speak to one another, how we sing to the Lord, how we give thanks for everything, and how we submit to one another.  

The other list Paul gives is the fruit of the Spirit.  In other words, what is the result of the spirit living in you?   The result you get if you plant apple trees is apples.  The fruit you get from a stalk of corn is corn. What fruit does a person filled with the Spirit bear? 

Galatians 5:22-23  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

Again, this is how we can tell we are filled with God’s Spirit: this is what someone who is filled with the Holy Spirit looks like.  

We all need to seek to be filled to overflowing with God’s Holy Spirit.  And we do that by listening to the Spirit, then following Him, and letting Him change the way we talk, the way we treat each other, our attitudes about life, and our relationship with the Father.  Let me share what John Stott said in his book, “Baptism and Fullness: The Work of the Holy Spirit Today”.

“But disobedience and our unbelief have robbed many of us of our full inheritance. It is still ours by right, because we are Christ’s, but we have failed to enter into it. We are like the Israelites when they had been given the Promised Land but had not yet taken possession of it. We need to repent and to return to God. We have indeed been baptized with the Spirit, but we continue to live on a level lower than our Spirit-baptism has made possible, because we do not remain filled with the Spirit.”

You can call it being filled by the Spirit, being led by the Spirit, or walking by the Spirit.  They are all ways of saying the same thing.  God’s Holy Spirit is in you.  He placed it there when you repented of your sins and accepted Jesus.  What have you done with the Holy Spirit within you?  Does the Spirit guide you in how you speak and how you act, or have you ignored the voice of the Spirit for so long that you no longer hear it?  If that is you, then today you need to repent of grieving the holy Spirit.  You need to commit to learning to listen to that Spirit within you and following Him.  Then you will bear the fruit that God designed you to bear: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

1.  Stott, John. Baptism and Fullness: The Work of the Holy Spirit Today (p. 85). Kindle Edition.

March 1, 2026 –  Double Visions — Acts #32

David Chupp Acts , , , , ,

March 1, 2026 –  Double Visions — Acts #32
Acts 10:9-43

Last week, we started looking at the story in Acts 10 of a centurion.  And we came to understand that this centurion is the second half of a duo of centurions that God uses to teach a very important lesson.

 So we looked at the first centurion that Jesus encountered in Matthew 8 and discussed Jesus attempt to teach his followers that Gentiles are accepted into His kingdom.  It is a message they should have learned from the Old Testament, but they chose to cling to their prejudice rather than scripture.  Jesus offers to go to this centurion’s home, something the Jews would have seen as impossible.  Then Jesus shocks his listeners further by telling them that this centurion’s faith is greater than that of any Jew he has ever met.  And then he tells them that many people from all over the world will join with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in that great banquet with God.  But they didn’t understand.

Jesus told them in the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations.  But they still did not understand, and now ten years later, in Acts 10, they are spreading the Gospel to primarily Jews, with the idea that you must become Jewish to follow Jesus.  So God chooses to use a second centurion to convince Peter that Gentiles are acceptable to Him.  

And while this centurion, Cornelius, is praying, God sends a messenger in a vision.  The messenger tells him that God has heard his prayers and seen his good deeds to the poor. and that God has accepted his prayers and deeds just as He would accept a burnt offering.  God tells this Roman Centurion, this Gentile, that even though his Jewish followers do not accept him, he has found acceptance by God.  Cornelius is to send for Peter to come to his house.  And Cornelius is wondering if Peter would actually come.  None of the Jews in his town would be caught dead in his house.  Would Peter be willing to come to the house of a Roman soldier?

God knew very well that Peter would not go with them to a Gentile’s home.  So while Cornelius’ delegation is on the way to Joppa, God has to do something drastic to change Peter’s thinking.  His attempts to teach Peter with the first centurion, other teachings, and then finally with the Great Commission just before he ascended to heaven didn’t work.  Peter and the others stubbornly clung to their prejudices.  God knew it would take something dramatic.  And let me tell you, God is awesome at drama when He needs to be.  

So to make this lesson finally stick with Peter, God produces 2 visions.  One to Cornelius the centurion we talked about last week, and now this second very dramatic vision to Peter.  Our scripture is Acts 10, starting in verse 9.

Acts 10:9-16   The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. And he became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened …

So it is noon, and Peter goes to a place by himself to pray.   And Peter is hungry.  Perhaps he missed breakfast.  Noon was not a typical Jewish mealtime.  They usually had a light breakfast and a more substantial meal in the late afternoon.  But while someone is preparing some food for Peter, God comes in a vision.  

Acts 10:10-16  …he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth.  In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven.  

Close your eyes for a minute and try to imagine what Peter saw.  I asked ChatGPT to draw a picture of what Peter saw, and here it is:

(Hey ChatGPT, those are some really bizarre animals.)

So if you are Peter, up on the roof, how do you interpret this vision?  What is God trying to tell Peter?   Here is what it says in the Tyndale Commentary on the Book of Acts:

“The effect of the vision was thus to announce to Peter that the distinction made in the Old Testament between foods that were ‘clean’, and therefore fit for human consumption, and those that were unclean, was now cancelled, so that in future Jewish Christians could eat any food without fear of defilement.”   (I. Howard Marshall, The Tyndale Commentary)

The Biblical laws that define food are spelled out primarily in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14.    Land animals must have divided hooves and must chew their cud (cattle, sheep, goats, deer, etc.) In contrast, pigs, camels, and rabbits, for example, are not food.    Swimming creatures that are food must have fins and scales, so shrimp, lobster, octopus, catfish, etc., are excluded.   Birds that were not defined as food were primarily birds of prey or scavengers, such as hawks, eagles, and vultures.  Chicken and turkey were allowed.  Let’s continue with the scripture.

Acts 10:17   So Peter understood from the vision that God changed the Torah rules about food, and he immediately called downstairs and changed his lunch order to bacon-wrapped scallops. 

No, that’s not quite right.

Acts 10:17   Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean…

Wait a minute.  How is it that Peter is “inwardly perplexed” about the vision?  He must not have had his copy of the Tyndale Commentary handy.  They seem pretty clear about it.  But Peter is utterly at a loss to explain what this means.   He knows God isn’t just rewriting his law book that has been in place for over 1000 years.  So the vision confuses him.  While he is thinking, Cornelius’s men arrive.

Acts 10:17-18   Now, while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon’s house, stood at the gate and called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was lodging there.

While they are approaching the house, this is happening upstairs with Peter:

Acts 10:19-20   And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.

The Holy Spirit tells him to accompany these strangers wherever they are going.  He is to go “without hesitation.”  Let’s look at this in a few other translations:

Acts 10:20 (ESV)   Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.
Acts 10:20  (KJV)  Arise therefore, go down and go with them, doubting nothing; for I have sent them.
Acts 10:20  (NASB)  But get up, go downstairs and accompany them without misgivings, for I have sent them Myself.

These are all ways of translating the Greek into English.  Have you considered the idea of doubt as hesitation?  That is a very Hebrew way of thinking.

In fact, there is no word in Biblical Hebrew like our word for doubt.  The idea of mental indecision leading to uncertainty is foreign to the Hebrew mindset.  In their worldview, God is king.  He is the ultimate decision maker.  Whatever God determines is law.  You don’t have to think about it and consider the options.  You don’t have to consider the good and the bad.  You don’t vote on it.  God says something, and whatever God says is good.  God gives instructions for living, and you obey them.

The Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). does have a word for people stopping to consider what to do, what action to take.  You see it in Genesis 3.  Adam and Eve stop to think whether they should eat the fruit or not.  Does it look good to me?  The word for that kind of thinking is sin.  It is a sin to refuse to accept God’s determination of right and wrong.  It is a sin to think you can make those decisions for yourself.

In 1 Kings, when the people in Elijah’s day are wavering between worshipping God and worshipping the false deity Baal, Elijah holds the contest on Mt Carmel.  He does not ask the people, “How long are you going to doubt God? He doesn’t have a word in his language to express that, so he says,

1 Kings 18:21  How long will you go limping between two different opinions?

Elijah uses a picture of a man hobbling at a crossroads, trying to take both directions at once and effectively going nowhere. This is the only way he can discuss the ridiculousness of not being obedient to God.

Elijah would not call this doubt; he would call it disobedience.  Let me give you one more illustration: I have used it before, but it is worth repeating.  When Jesus is walking on the water in the storm, Peter sees him and says an interesting thing:

Matthew 14:28   Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “Command me to come to you on the water.”

And Jesus does.  But why does Peter ask Jesus to command him to walk on the water?  Because if Jesus wills for Peter to walk on water, then Peter has no choice but to follow his Lord and King.  And if Jesus wills for Peter to walk on water, then Peter knows that Jesus will certainly give him the ability to follow through. And Peter is initially successful, but then he looks at the wind and becomes afraid.  He takes his focus off the power of Jesus and looks at the power of the wind.  

And when Peter stops walking, he starts sinking.  As long as he is being obedient to Jesus command, Jesus is empowering him to do the task. But Peter stops walking and then starts sinking.  And when Peter is sinking, first Jesus reaches out to pull him back up, but then he says, 

Matthew 14:31   “Oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

This is the ESV rendering, but that is not exactly what Jesus said.  Jesus was a Jew.  Like Elijah, He did not have that word or concept of doubt that we had.  The Greek word there is distazo, which isn’t about mental confusion but about a lack of action or hesitation.  Jesus wasn’t asking why Peter was thinking wrong.  He was asking, “Why did you stop walking?”  Peter hesitated; he stopped walking; he stopped being obedient.  So Jesus really said, 

Matthew 14:31   “Oh, you of little faith, why did you stop being obedient?”

And now, 10-11 years later, this same Peter is faced with another problem in Acts 10.  He gets a clear word from the Holy Spirit to 

Acts 10:20    Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.

So, like the command to come to Jesus on the water, Peter gets another direct command from God to go with these men.  And the Spirit throws in there, “And this time don’t hesitate!” So Peter heads downstairs.

Acts 10:21-23   And Peter went down to the men and said, “I am the one you are looking for. What is the reason for your coming?” And they said, “Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to hear what you have to say.” So he invited them in to be his guests.”

Peter invites them in.  (It is ok for a Jew to have a Gentile into their house.)  But now Peter has another problem.  Not only is he still puzzled about that crazy vision, but these men are Gentiles.  And just like the command from Jesus to Peter to come to him on the water, Peter now has a command to do something that seems more impossible than walking on water.  God has commanded him to go to the house of a Gentile, a Roman Centurion.  This goes against everything he learned as a Jewish boy growing up.  You don’t go to the house of a Gentile.  They are unclean. 

But Peter remembers the last time he disobeyed a direct order.  He thought he was going to drown.  He has learned to be obedient.  He doesn’t understand why God wants him to do this, but he goes.

Acts 10:23-24  The next day he rose and went away with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied him. And on the following day, they entered Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends.

So picture this:  Cornelius is excited.   God has a message for him through this disciple, and he is anxiously awaiting to hear what Peter will say.  He has called everyone over, and the house is full of friends and family.  Meanwhile, Peter left on this journey thinking, “What am I doing?  Why am I going to a Gentile’s house and breaking every rule my mother taught me?”   But on the way there, Peter figures it out.

Acts 10:25-29   When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up, saying, “Stand up; I too am a man.” And as he talked with him, he went in and found many persons gathered. And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me.

Peter apparently now knows that the vision he saw on the roof with all the animals wasn’t about food at all.  It was about people.  If God says they are acceptable, then Peter has no right to say they are not.  Apparently, the people who wrote the Tyndale Commentary missed Peter’s explanation in verse 28.  Oh, Mr. Marshall, you also missed it in verse 34:

Acts 10:34-35   So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

And I can almost hear God in heaven saying, “Well, it’s about time. I have been trying to teach Peter this lesson for over 10 years.”And just in case you are still confused about the vision, I can tell you that Peter didn’t hit the Red Lobster when he returned to Jerusalem and partake in the Crab fest.  In fact, if you read the rest of the New Testament, it is apparent that none of these Jews changed their dietary habits.  There is ample evidence that the Jews who are following Jesus continue to observe the Torah that God gave them in Leviticus and Deuteronomy throughout the NT, including circumcision, Nazarite vows, dietary laws, required prayer times, and the appointed times of the Jewish calendar.  

This is completely consistent with what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 5:17-18   Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”

Jesus didn’t come to erase the laws in Deuteronomy and Leviticus; he came to show people how to live them correctly.  He fulfilled them all and erased not a single letter.  Just because the Jews have now met their promised Messiah, doesn’t mean they can throw out all the things God said before.  None of those commandments is going away for them until heaven and earth disappear.  And last time I looked, the earth and the sky are both still present.

So if you are Jewish, and you find your promised mesiah in Jesus, you continue to follow the laws as before.  What Jesus corrects in the Gospels and here in Acts 10 are not God’s laws but man-made ones.  That stuff about Gentiles being unclean and not entering their houses.  That wasn’t God’s law; man made it up.  And Jesus spent much of his ministry correcting what man got wrong about his laws.

What is the lesson we are to learn from Peter’s vision, now that we know it was not about what food to eat?  If God has called someone clean, we should not consider them otherwise.   God makes the rules, and we follow them without question and without hesitation.  If you find yourself wanting to make your own rules or argue with God about the rules, then ask Adam and Eve how that turned out.

No group of people is beyond God’s grace and mercy; the gospel is for all.  It is for all of your friends and all of your enemies.  It is for people who like you and hate you.  It is for people who agree with you and people who don’t.   It is for the rich and the poor, the person with the nice home and the homeless.  It is for your best friend and the beggar on the street.  God calls them all.  And if God approves them, we have no right to dismiss them as unacceptable.  

But I want to look at one more aspect of this lesson that we often miss.  God sent his son, Jesus, to solve our sin problem.  He suffered and died for our sins and removed the penalty of death for the sins that we committed, the penalty we deserved.  When we turn over our lives to Jesus and make him King of our lives, accepting his sacrifice for the remission of our sins, then God pronounces us clean.

But have you ever just dwelt on your sins and felt that you were unworthy?  Have you ever looked at yourself and decided that you couldn’t speak up for Jesus, because you know your friends have seen your own shortcomings?  How can you pretend to be righteous in front of them?  How many times have you refrained from doing some work for God because you felt you weren’t good enough?  How many times have you sat by yourself feeling guilty for all the wrongs you have done in your life?  Is there some sin from your past that hangs over you that you can’t seem to get beyond?   Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong in the family of God?

There are too many of God’s people paralyzed in their Christian walk because they keep recalling past sins and just can’t let go.  If you still think about your past sins that you have confessed and repented of, and if you still carry guilt for these things, then I have something to say to you that you need to hear. It is what Peter would say if he were here this morning, because it is the message God sent him in Acts 10.

How dare you call someone unclean that God has cleansed? 

God has cleansed you.  You have no right to say otherwise.  His blood has washed you whiter than snow.  Don’t wallow in your guilt.  God is faithful and just.  Jesus took on your sin; he suffered the penalty for sin.  If you want to keep remembering it or want to punish yourself, then you are saying that Jesus didn’t do what he said he would do.  God is no liar.  

God does not want you to live in the shadow of your past sins.  Look at what God says:

Jeremiah 31:34   For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

And in case you missed it in Jeremiah, here it is in the second testament.

Hebrews 8:12   For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.

If God has forgotten your sin, then why do you keep thinking about it?  Those thoughts come from the adversary himself, the father of lies.  Any time those memories pop up, then you should rebuke them in the name of Jesus.  

We must learn the lesson that was so hard for Peter to learn. What God has cleansed, I cannot call unclean.  You can walk out this door today knowing that the blood of Jesus has cleansed you.  You are righteous in God’s eyes.  And share this incredibly good news with everyone you know.

John 8:36   So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

February 26, 2026 –  Double Vision – Two Centurions — Acts #31

David Chupp Acts , ,

February 26, 2026 –  Double Vision – Two Centurions — Acts #31
Acts 10:1-8

Double vision is an odd thing.  I only experienced it once after a car accident when my jeep rolled several times and ended up upside down on the road.  I had a bit of a concussion and was hanging upside down by the seatbelt.  By the way, if that ever happens, do not release the seatbelt without bracing for the fall on your head.   But I was disoriented for a bit and saw double for just a few minutes.  It is an odd feeling.  

This morning, as we continue in Acts 10, we have a story about a Roman centurion.   But I see not one but two centurions here.  Because this story is tied to another centurion’s story in scripture, and the story of the first centurion is found in Matthew 8.

Matthew 8:5-9 (NIV)  When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”
Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”
The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.

Centurions were the backbone of the Roman army, the equivalent of our highest-ranking non-commissioned officers, commanding 80 men.  (It originally was 100 men, thus the name (century =100), but the Romans later reduced the squad to 80 for efficiency.  And what makes this centurion unique is that he recognized Jesus’ authority.  This happens right after the Sermon on the Mount.  And remember that one of the things that most impressed people in Jesus’ sermon was this:

Matthew 7:28-29  And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.

Jesus said many good things in the Sermon on the Mount, but what most impressed people was the manner in which he spoke, for he spoke with authority.  He didn’t sound like a commentator or a teacher giving an opinion; he sounded like the author.  

Jesus speaks with authority about the scriptures because they are his scriptures.  And he is trying to correct their misinterpretations of His scriptures.  Several times in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, “You have heard it said, but I say unto you.”  What He is doing is telling them that they need a correct understanding.   And he has the authority to give the interpretation.  Jesus has come to correct what people got wrong about His word.

Then what is the first thing that happens when Jesus walks down the mountain after the sermon?

Matthew 8:1-4 “When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.””

He has just astounded them by his authority over scripture.  And now he shows them he has authority over disease.  He will later show his disciples that he has authority over the wind and waves by calming the sea.  Just as Jesus had authority over the scriptures because they are his, he has authority over the world because it is his as well.  He created it.

So this centurion comes to Jesus and recognizes his authority. Then Jesus volunteers to go to the centurion’s home. Most translations have this as a statement by Jesus: “I will come and heal him.”  But the NIV has Jesus asking, “Shall I come and heal him?”  Greek scholars agree that this indeed should be a question, and it is worded in such a way as to emphasize the “I” — Shall I come?  Because this would be very surprising.  Jews in Jesus’ day did not go into the home of a Gentile, much less a Roman soldier.  The original idea behind this was to avoid ritual impurity from food or utensils, but it had morphed into more of a racial prejudice.  They were the enemy, and they were unclean.  No one would enter his home, certainly not a prophet or holy man. 

Then the centurion reveals his belief in Jesus’ authority.  He is convinced that Jesus is the owner of this world and all that is in it.  He can will for something to happen, and it will happen. But let’s look at Jesus’ response:

Matthew 8:10  When Jesus heard this, he was amazed…

First of all, Jesus was amazed.  Matthew uses this Greek word many times to explain how people, again and again, were amazed by what Jesus did or said.  But this is the only time he uses it to show that Jesus is amazed by somebody.  What left Jesus amazed?

Matthew 8:10-12   When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Jesus is amazed by the centurion’s faith.  This man is convinced beyond any doubt that Jesus has authority over everything, including sickness.  Jesus recognizes that this centurion’s faith is on a completely different level from that of his disciples or any Jewish person he has met.  This didn’t sit well with the crowd.  Jesus points out this Gentile, this Roman soldier of all people, he has more faith than any Jew?   Why, Jesus, he is not Jewish!  He can’t even be part of the faithful!  He is an unclean Gentile!  How can you say that?  But Jesus doesn’t stop there.

Jesus speaks of something his listeners knew well, the great Messianic banquet, when God gathers all his faithful together in the last days for a great feast.  The true faithful are invited, and others are left out.    And every Jewish person there believed the same thing.  The Jews would be invited, but the Gentiles would be left out. They will all dine with God and their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.   And here is Jesus saying that foreigners will come from all over (the east and the west) to sit at the table, many of them.  This is a radical statement.

Peter and the others are standing here listening to this.  Do they understand what he is saying?  No, and this is very important, they didn’t get it at all at this point.  Jesus is not speaking in riddles.  It is stated very clearly.  Still, they did not comprehend.   Because this is counter to everything they have been taught their whole life about these unclean Gentiles.    

Jesus tried to tell them.  And he tries to tell them later.  It is in his Great Commission.  And you all know the Great Commission.  But do you remember how it begins?

Matthew 28:18-20   Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me…

Oh, did you see that…. all authority has been given to me.   He is trying to get them to see what the centurion in Capernaum in Matthew 8 knew.  I have all authority.  I created the world, I am the Torah. I am the Word of God. I am the Son of God.   Keep reading….

Matthew 28:18-20   Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all of the Jews, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit….

No, that is not what he said. But listen, that was still what they thought.  Even after Jesus’ encounter with the first centurion, they still think God is only for the Jews.  But Jesus said this:

Matthew 28:18-20   Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.   
Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Go and make disciples of all nations.   Jews and Gentiles.  Greeks and Romans.  Americans and Iraqis.  No one is off limits.  The Gospel is for everyone.  There is no one so unclean that they can not be my disciple.  But they still didn’t get it…

So this encounter with the centurion is the first time Jesus shows that He is here for all people.   Jesus will concentrate his time on earth with the Jews as predicted in the scriptures, but he is very clear that it is not the end but the beginning.  As Paul stated it:  

Romans 1:16  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

There is salvation for everyone who believes.  “Jews first and then Gentiles.”  But again, at the time Jesus gives the Great Commission and then ascends to heaven, and even 10 years later in Acts 10, Peter and the other disciples don’t get it.   They are still thinking “Jew only, not Gentile.”

How will God pierce their prejudice and finally teach them this lesson?

That is why we have the story of the other centurion.  So we return to Acts 10.  Last week, we discussed Peter’s travels along the coast and through the plain of Sharon, including the towns of Lydda and Joppa.   The action in today’s story takes place in Caesarea.

Many cities in the times of Roman Emperors were named “Caesarea” as a way to honor the emperor, Caesar.   If you want to get in good with the new emperor, build a big city and put his name on it.   There were two major cities in Israel with that name.  Caesarea Philippi was located north of the Sea of Galilee, and was where Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  But we are speaking today of Caesarea Maritima, or Caesarea “by the sea.”  This city was built by Herod the (not-so) Great between 22 and 19 BC, and he named it after Caesar Augustus.   It became the administrative and military capital of the Roman province of Judea.   This is where Pilate and other Roman officials stayed.

Acts 10:1-8   At Caesarea, there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God.

Cornelius is described as a “devout man.”  He and all of his household are worshipping Yehovah, the God of Israel, but they have not converted to Judaism.  The common name for people who worship but don’t convert to Judaism is “God-fearer.”  He was generous to the poor and prayed continually, meaning he kept the Jewish order of prayer throughout the day, reciting the Shema 2-3 times a day and maintaining regular prayer times.  Two of the regular prayer times coincided with the Tamid offering in the Temple at 9 am and 3 pm, and then there was an evening prayer time, typically after sundown.  But he had not become a full proselyte, which required formal questioning and circumcision.  So the Jews in Jerusalem would have considered him pagan.  Like the centurion in Matthew 8, no Jew would ever enter his home.

But that attitude didn’t stop Jesus from entering the centurion’s home in Matthew 8.  And it didn’t stop God from being willing to send a messenger from his throne room to Cornelius’ home.

Acts 10:3 About the ninth hour of the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, “Cornelius.”

It was the 9th hour of the day, that is, 9 hours from daybreak, so about 3 pm.  And Cornelius is in his regular prayer time, the same time all devout Jews gathered to pray.  And God sends him a message in the form of a vision.  An angel who calls his name.  And he reacts the same way everyone reacts to one of God’s messengers.

Acts 10:4  “And he stared at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?” And he said to him, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God.

The language the messenger uses to address Cornelius speaks of his donations to the poor and his prayers, as if they were the smoke of a burnt offering ascending to God. Have you thought about this?  We bring offerings in the form of money to God, but have you stopped to consider that our prayers, devotion, praise, and good deeds are also offerings to the Father?

After the Jerusalem temple was destroyed and they could no longer do animal sacrifices, Jews today consider their prayers, their giving of alms, and their praise as acceptable sacrifices instead. This thought is seen throughout the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testaments.

Psalm 50:23 “The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
Hebrews 13:15 “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.”

Paul said it this way:

Romans 12:1  “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Our devotion to God, what we say, what we do, our whole life is a living sacrifice.

So the messenger tells Cornelius that God sees his devotion as an acceptable sacrifice.  Can you imagine how Cornelius felt?  He has been worshipping the God of the Jews for some time, but the Jews who claim this God do not in any way see Cornelius as acceptable.  The Jews do not accept him, but God does accept him.  This is good news!

And then the messenger says:

Acts 10:5-8 “And now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter.   He is lodging with one Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea.  ” When the angel who spoke to him had departed, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among those who attended him, and having related everything to them, he sent them to Joppa.”

Cornelius is to send for Simon Peter to come to his house.  He has heard of Peter.  He is a Jew.  And he was also one of Jesus’ 12 disciples.   What could this mean?   Will Peter come to the house of a Gentile?  Even if God has accepted Cornelius, does that mean Peter will?  And if God’s messenger asked him to send for one of Jesus’ disciples, does that mean that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, as some people say?

What do you think?  Will Peter ignore the Jewish ban on entering a Gentile’s home?  Will Peter accept an unclean Gentile Roman Soldier?  We will discuss this next week, but I am going to let you know now.   Peter will end up coming.  But it is going to take something really big for God to convince Peter that it is okay to visit Cornelius.  God is going to have to do something dramatic to change Peter’s prejudice against the Gentile world.  It will take something big to end Peter’s racism.   You see, the prejudices that you were raised with die hard, because you don’t even realize those things you learned were racist.  You were just told that is how it was.  And you accepted it.  Many of us here were raised in an area of the country that embraced racism for many years.  And it took a lot to break us out of thought patterns that were embedded deep within us.  

Peter was taught all his life that Gentiles were ceremonially unclean.  There was no hope for them unless they converted to Judaism.  They ate unclean food and did unclean things.  And if you went around them, you would also be unclean.  But that wasn’t God’s teaching.  That was man’s perversion of God’s teaching.   God never said an entire people group was unclean.  But Peter learned these things as part of the tradition of his faith.  Not scripture, but tradition.  Jesus told the Pharisees:

Mark 7:8 “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.

We cannot accept things just because tradition says so.  We have to put everything to the test of scripture.  I am reminded of a discussion I had with a friend back in 2015.  We had been discussing the doctrine of Original Sin in our Bible Study, and it turned into a several-month-long email discussion with others.  

So we exchanged emails for months discussing scripture as it pertains to this doctrine, and I learned a lot from our discussions.  But at one point, one of my friends in the discussion said to me, “You just frighten me because you’re really smart and apparently read everything ever published. But you’re also a bit of an iconoclast, which makes me nervous.”   While I appreciated his compliment, I have to admit I had to look up the word ‘iconoclast’ to make sure I understood what he meant.  

According to Google, an iconoclast is “a person who attacks or challenges cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, or widely accepted practices, often viewing them as superstitious or erroneous. The term originates from the Greek words for “image” and “breaker,” historically referring to those who destroyed religious icons.  A sacred image breaker, challenging cherished traditional beliefs.”

Well, once I knew what it meant, I thanked my friend for the compliment.  Yes, I told him, I feel the responsibility to challenge all traditional beliefs in light of the scripture God gave us.  I told him that the best compliment I had ever received was that it was exactly what I saw Jesus doing with the religious leaders of His day, challenging all their traditions in light of scripture.  

When I was young, I read a tract that someone left in our mailbox from the KKK that used scripture to say how people of dark skin color were cursed by God.   I bet some of you saw it too.  God, please forgive them for this perversion of your word.  Racism runs deep in my part of the country.  Who is acceptable and who is not.  That is what is at stake here in Acts 10.   Do you have to be Jewish to worship God?  Do you have to be Jewish to encounter Jesus?

Peter’s answer on the day that Cornelius got his vision would have been, “Yes, you do.”   But God will deal with Peter, and next week we will talk about Peter’s vision and why it is so critical to Jesus’ movement in Acts.   But for now, consider these two centurions.  They are not random characters. 

The centurion in Matthew 8 is a prophecy.  Cornelius in Acts 10 is the reality, the fulfillment of that prophecy.  The first shows that Gentiles can have faith.  The second shows that Gentiles are fully welcomed into the family of God.  God did not change His plan; He revealed it progressively. Together, these two centurions reveal that from the beginning, God’s plan was never limited to one nation.  The gospel was always meant for the world.   As God told the children of Israel after they passed through the Sea, 

Exodus 19:4-6   You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.

A kingdom of priests to take the message of the one true God to all the nations.  But they held the gospel too close.  They kept it to themselves.  They said, ” You must become like us to share in our God.  You must become Jewish.”  It is no different than the mistake made by early missionaries to the Native Americans here, who forced them to become like us to worship our God.  You must wear our clothes, follow our customs and traditions, and sing our hymns to worship our God.   

God does not want us to become like someone else.
He wants us to become like Him.

But the nation of Israel never accepted the role of priests to the world.  They were priests only to each other.  So God comes in the form of a Jew who is not bound by the tradition of isolationism.  Jesus comes as a son of Abraham who will be the priest to the nations, and lead a group of his brother Jews to become priests to the nations.

Oh, they came reluctantly, but they came.  It took many years to convince them.  God has to shock Peter; he has to basically hit him on the head to wake him up to the truth that he tried to explain way back in Matthew 8 with the first centurion.  And don’t think Peter totally understands it yet in Acts 10.  We will see how he still does not completely buy in.  But he eventually does.  And when Peter finally understands, he goes 100%

For it is Peter, just another Jew who hated the Romans; Peter, who at one time would not dare consider entering a Roman house; who at one time felt they were not worthy to worship his God.  It is Peter who ends up going to Rome to lead as many Romans as he can to Jesus.  And from Rome, he writes a letter to the Gentile church in Asia Minor.  And he gives them the same charge that God gave his ancestors thousands of years ago:

1 Peter 2:9-10    But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Peter has finally understood what God said back in Exodus.  And now he preaches that same message to the Gentile followers of Jesus in Asia Minor.   Once you were not a chosen people of God, but now you are the chosen people; in fact, all people are chosen by God, and we are a nation of priests whose job it is to spread the name of Yehovah to everyone, for no one is unclean.

February 23, 2026 –  Don’t Waste the Healing — Acts #30

David Chupp Acts , ,

February 23, 2026 –  Don’t waste the healing — Acts #30
Acts 9:26–30 

Today, we discuss the purpose of healing in God’s story.  Now, it may seem obvious that the purpose of healing is to remove disease, restore physical function, and relieve discomfort.  But the scriptures are clear that God has an even higher purpose when He heals.  And if we focus only on the healing itself, we miss the most important thing.  

Acts 9:32-35   Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda.

So Peter is traveling west of Jerusalem and along the coast, through Joppa and on to Caesarea.  (You should be able to draw from memory a quick map of Israel, at least with the Sea of Galilee, Jordan River, and Dead Sea, along with a few major cities.)  Note the following on the map below:  Lydda is the Old Testament town of Lod. Joppa is the port from which Jonah sailed when he was running from God (modern-day Tel Aviv).  Note the town of Gaza, for you are, of course, very familiar with the Gaza Strip.  And the New Testament port of Caesarea, from which Saul departed on a boat back to his hometown of Tarsus.  

Peter is traveling from Jerusalem to Lydda and then to Joppa in our scripture today.  He is following the path Philip took earlier.  We read about that in Acts 8.

Acts 8:40  But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through, he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Peter is back in the same area, teaching the new followers and spreading the good news of Jesus.  And in the book of Acts, Luke tells us two stories of healing:  a man who had been paralyzed for years and a girl who had died.  Luke, whom Paul calls “the beloved physician” (Col. 4:14), focuses more on healing in his Gospel and the book of Acts than in other New Testament books, and frequently provides more detailed descriptions of physical problems.  But in our scripture today in Acts 9, we will see more than just two miraculous healings. Because here, Luke pulls the curtain back a little and shows us not just that God heals, but why God heals—and what healing is meant to accomplish.  

These are powerful miracles. But Luke’s focus is not on the person being healed, or on Peter, or even on the physical healing itself. Luke keeps pointing us to one truth:  Healing is a signpost. It points to the glory of Christ and invites people to believe.

Acts 9:32-35   Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda. There, he found a man named Aeneas, bedridden for eight years, who was paralyzed. And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” And immediately he rose. And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord. 

Aeneas has been bedridden and paralyzed for eight years. Eight years is a long time.  Long enough to endure many unsuccessful treatments.  Long enough for hope to disappear.  Long enough for people to stop expecting any change.   But then Peter comes in and says something very specific:

Acts 9:34  And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.”

“Make your bed,” may seem an odd thing for Peter to say.    He is saying, “Your time of lying in a bed all day is over. You don’t need that now.  Roll up your bedding and resume life.”  Now, what was the result of this healing?  Verse 34 ends with this:  “And immediately he rose.”  But this is not the end of the story; it is only the beginning.  Keep reading.

Acts 9:35  And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord.1

Luke does not say, “They admired Peter,” or “They were impressed.”  He says they turned to the Lord.  The healing was real. The healing was compassionate.  God wants to heal his children.  But the primary reason for the healing was evangelistic — it revealed the living power of Jesus.  That is the reason for the healing.

The miracle is not the end of the story, but only the beginning.  The healing was not the destination; it was but a doorway to faith.  Next, we meet Tabitha.

Acts 9:36  “Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity.

She isn’t introduced by illness. She’s introduced by her life:  “She was always doing good and helping the poor.”  What a great way to describe someone, Dr. Luke.

I was in the third year of Medical School and had just started seeing patients in Grady Hospital.  My first rotation was in the surgery department.  Morning rounds went like this: The medical students and interns gathered several hours before rounds to examine the patients and collect all labs.  And the whole group traveled from room to room, a parade of white coats.  If it were your assigned patient, you would present the patient to the team like this:

“This is a 67-year-old male who presented to this hospital with right lower quadrant abdominal pain.  He is status post appendectomy 2 days ago. He is afebrile with stable vital signs and a well-healing incision.  Labs are significant for…. “  You had better have memorized all the facts, vital signs, and lab results, for if they asked you and you didn’t know, they would then ask you why you didn’t want this patient to get good care.  It could be brutal for the students.  But then, later in the year, I did my first rotation in pediatrics.

We had this wonderful Pediatrician who was the attending doctor for our team.  He had been a private practice pediatrician for 25 years and was now teaching at Egleston Hospital.  I remember the first day on rounds well.  One of my friends had the first patient and began the presentation outside the patient’s room just as we had done in surgery.  “This is a seven-year-old female who presented with fever and diffuse bruising 2 days ago…” He went on to describe the pertinent labs and her current therapy.  When he was done, our attending doctor calmly asked, “What is her name?”  Who in her family is with her?  Does she have any brothers or sisters?  What is her favorite color?  Do you think she is scared?”

My friend just stood there silently.  And our attending said, “Remember, you are treating a little girl, not a disease.  She is definitely scared, and you can’t offer her any comfort if you don’t take the time to get to know her.  Her parents need to know that you care, or you will not be giving her good care.”  So Dr. Luke was not from the surgery department at Grady Hospital.  He tells us something about Tabitha.  She did many good works to help the poor in her town and became well known for them.  With that in mind, let’s get back to the story.

Acts 9:36-39  Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days, she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter rose and went with them. And when he arrived, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them.

You get this touching picture of the people she had helped, likely poor people who loved Tabitha, wearing the clothes she made for them.  It always leaves a hole in the world when someone dies who was a force in this world for Jesus.  My mind, like yours, goes to many funerals I have attended for people whose Christian walk made an amazing difference in the lives of others.   And here in Joppa, they aren’t just mourning a person; they are mourning love, kindness, practical mercy. Tabitha’s life had already been a testimony.  But at the time of her death, she was just getting started.

Acts 9:40-41   But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed; and turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then, calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive.

A miracle of resurrection, very similar to what we saw when Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter back in Luke 8.  Remember, He sent everyone out of the room except Peter, James, and John.  Jesus took her by the hand and said almost the same thing Peter said to the girl in Acts 9.  Here we see  Peter walking in the footsteps of Jesus.  But again, this resurrection is not the end of the story but is only the beginning.  Then we see the results.

Acts 9:42  And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

This is the result. There it is again.  Not just amazement.  Not just a celebration, but the birth of faith.  The healings in Lydda and Joppa did not end with healthier people — they ended with new believers.  God used healing to reveal His mercy, His power, and His Son.

Tabitha had already brought glory to God through quiet, faithful service. Her healing would now amplify that witness.  Sometimes God is glorified by a life that displays compassion.  Sometimes God is glorified by a miracle that displays power.  But this is the result.  God is made known to people, and God is glorified.   Throughout scripture, God uses healing as a means to reveal Himself to people.  

After delivering Israel from Egypt, God heals the bitter waters of Marah, and He tells them:

Exodus 15:26   If you will diligently listen to the voice of Yehovah your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am Yehovah, your healer.

I am your healer.  The healing isn’t just practical — it’s revelatory.  God is showing Israel who He is.   Healing becomes a means of self-disclosure.

And do you remember Naaman, the Aramean military leader who had leprosy?   He comes to Elisha, who tells him to wash in the Jordan River.   And when he is healed, Naaman says:

2 Kings 5:15  “And he said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.”

The healing leads to confession.  It leads to worship.  It glorifies the God of Israel before a Gentile military leader.  And Naaman returns to his country with knowledge of God.  His healing brings the knowledge of God and glory to God.  That is the point. There are so many stories in the Scriptures that illustrate this point.  Just one more.  When Jesus is told that his friend Lazarus is very sick, He says:

John 11:4   This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.

That is one of the clearest purpose statements in Scripture.  Jesus even delays coming, allowing Lazarus to be dead for 4 days — not out of indifference, but so that a greater glory might be displayed.   When Lazarus walks out of the tomb, many believe in Jesus.  And it becomes the final straw that leads the religious leaders to pursue Jesus’ death.    

When we discuss the Lazarus story, someone always asks, “I wonder what happened to Lazarus after that?”   The scriptures don’t say it, but you have to know that everywhere Lazarus went, he was a billboard pointing to the power and the glory of God.  Yes, Jesus wanted to heal his friend.  He did not want his friend to die.  But his mission here on earth was to bring glory to the Father, and this resurrection and his own crucifixion and resurrection brought glory to God.

We can’t miss this important point.  We pray for healing as if that is what we need.  Every time we meet, we pray for healing.  We text each other prayer requests for people to be healed.  And Yehovah is a God of great compassion.  He desires our healing.  In fact, He created this world to be a place with no illness or disease.  But sin cursed the world.  So we all suffer.  We all need healing. 

We have celebrated many healings in our congregation in the past several years.  As a doctor, I can tell you many instances of when I saw miraculous healing of a deadly disease or an advanced cancer.  And there have been times I have seen God’s people pray fervently in large numbers for a healing that did not happen.  It can be frustrating to see some healed and others not.  But we have to remember that healing is never the endpoint.  As in these stories in the Scripture, healing is good; healing is out of God’s compassionate heart.  But healing is for so much more than the relief of our physical problems or pain.  It is to bring glory to God.  It is to bring others to the knowledge of the God who heals.

Don’t waste the healing.  There is such a danger that we become so focused on physical needs or so fascinated by physical healing that we forget the most important part.  To bring glory to God, to make him known to others.  That is our purpose.

So what are people seeing in us?  In Lydda and Joppa, people saw something they could not explain — and it led them to Jesus.  We may not be called to raise the dead.  But we are called to tell others about the one who can raise the dead.   We can bring glory to God for the healings we see, to let people know it is not just about the healing.  It is about the God behind the healing.   We are called to live and serve in ways that point beyond ourselves. 

1 Corinthians 10:31  “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Colossians 3:17  “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

When God answers prayer… give Him glory.
When God brings restoration… name His kindness.
When God works in your life… tell the story in a way that leads people to Christ.
Because in the end, the purpose of every act of divine healing is this:
That people would see the power and compassion of Jesus — and turn to the Lord.

1.  Sharon is the Hebrew word for “field”, and usually refers to the area of fertile land on the coast extending just south of Mount Carmel to south of Joppa.  In Song of Solomon 2:1, the King James version translated the Hebrew phrase as “Rose of Sharon,” leaving out the definite article – it is actually “rose of the sharon” (field).  Translations before the King James had translated the Hebrew more literally as “rose of the field.”

February 10, 2026 –  Persecution and Peace — Acts #29

David Chupp Acts , ,

February 10, 2026 –  Persecution and Peace — Acts #29
Acts 9:26–30 

So let’s review where we are in Acts 9:  Saul was persecuting the followers of Jesus until he encountered Jesus himself on the road to Damascus.  Then he spends 3 years in Arabia to hear the word from God and to practice sharing Jesus with others.  He returns to Damascus, but the Jewish leaders and the governor seek to kill him, and he escapes being lowered in a basket out of the city.  He returns to Jerusalem, but the Jesus followers there are scared of him.  Barnabas serves as a mediator to bring Saul to the apostles, and Saul is welcomed.  That leads us to our scripture this morning:

Acts 9:28-30   So he [Saul] went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists. But they were seeking to kill him. And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.”

So Barnabas got the Jesus followers and Saul together, but it didn’t take long for Saul to get in trouble with the “Helenists” in the city.  Why did they get so upset with Saul?  These “Helenists” are Jews who grew up outside of Israel in the Greek/Roman culture and speak Greek.1  This is the same group that Stephen was speaking to in Acts 6.  This is the group that went to the Sanhedrin and accused Stephen of blasphemy, which led to his stoning.  And once again, they get angry.  Imagine how they feel.  Here is Saul, one of the members of that Sanhedrin who voted to stone Stephen, now saying the very things to them that Stephen said about Jesus.  They see this as ultimate betrayal.  So now they are seeking to kill Saul.  Notice it is the Greek-speaking Jews who are after Paul and not the Jewish leaders, not the Temple authorities.   But Jerusalem is too hot for Saul, so the apostles arrange to send him to the coastal city of Caesarea to catch a boat to his hometown of Tarsus

And this is where we will leave Saul for a bit, after once again having to flee for his life.  Then Acts continues with a surprising verse:

Acts 9:31  So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

Slow down a minute. After this death threat and yet another escape for Saul, you don’t expect the next verse to talk about a time of peace. But now, there was a time of relative peace for the followers of Jesus, and their number multiplied.  Why had the persecution from the Jewish leaders died down at this time?

I think there are 3 primary reasons. First, because the followers of Jesus were scattered.   

They had all been centered in Jerusalem since the miracle at Pentecost.  They had grown to such a large number (at least 8-10,000) that the Jewish rulers felt threatened.  They were all gathering in the Temple grounds to meet, and there they were preaching about Jesus.  They were right in the faces of these Jewish leaders and were seen as a threat.

When Stephen was stoned to death for blasphemy, they all feared for their lives, and most of them left Jerusalem.  Once the crowd was gone and the rest into hiding, the pressure was relieved.  Those in charge of the temple no longer saw them, so they no longer felt threatened.  Less visibility equals less friction.  Out of sight, out of mind.  They didn’t care so much about small gatherings of believers in the countryside.  Well, there was one in their group who cared very much.

Saul still cared.  He asked for letters to hunt them down all over and have them bound and carried back to Jerusalem for punishment.  So the second reason that persecution died down was what happened to Saul.  When Saul met Jesus and discontinued his attack on Jesus’ followers and then disappeared, the persecution died down.  When he returns three years later, His trouble comes not from the Jewish leaders but from Greek-speaking Jews in Jerusalem.  Without Saul’s driving force on the persecution of Jesus’ followers, the religious authorities in Jerusalem just didn’t seem nearly as concerned about it.

We see what a lightning rod Saul was, first against Jesus, and now for Jesus.  Saul was the powerful driving force behind the persecution. Now you can better understand what Jesus did on the road to Damascus.   With this change, Jesus brought the persecution of his followers to a standstill and, at the same time, created the most dynamic missionary for his movement.  One man coming to Jesus makes a world of difference.

Finally, the third reason for the pause in persecution is that Jewish leaders had other problems brewing.   Something happened in Rome around that time that had a significant effect on matters.  Caligula became emperor of Rome in 37 AD and began a reign marked by cruelty, megalomania, and insanity.  He declared himself god above all other gods. In 40 AD, Caligula issued an order to place a statue of himself in the Jewish Temple’s Holy of Holies.

As you would expect, resistance by the Jews was swift and intense, with mass protests, strikes, and other forms of passive resistance. At one point, the historian Josephus notes that “tens of thousands” of Jews gathered in Tiberias for a 40-day protest.2 The governor of Judea at the time, knowing it would cause war, deliberately delayed the placement of Caligula’s statue.  He was successful in postponing the placement until Caligula was assassinated in Rome in 41 AD, killed by members of his own Senate who judged him to be insane.   

This immediate threat from Rome far overshadowed the troubles of the Jesus followers, so there was a pause in the persecution.  It would, however, soon be back.  In 44 AD, James, one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, was beheaded by Herod Agrippa I.  Peter will be back in prison again, and Saul will suffer all kinds of persecution.   This is but a brief, temporary time of peace. But I want you to consider how this ebb and flow of persecution affected Jesus’ movement.  

After Stephen was stoned, persecution ramped up tremendously.  Under Saul’s leadership, followers of Jesus were being taken bound to the temple courts to be whipped, beaten, and imprisoned.  Their homes were raided.  And so many fled to other parts of the country.

But when they fled, they took Jesus with them.  The towns they settled in became new centers for the Jesus movement to spread.  And their numbers increased dramatically.  Persecution, meant to destroy the movement, actually had the opposite effect, causing it to spread throughout the country and grow tremendously.   

God did not cause the persecution of the early followers.  He did not want his people to be terrorized, beaten, and imprisoned.  Evil men in high places made that decision.  God did not cause it, but he used it.  He took a bad situation, persecution, and made it work for good.

We see this pattern all through the Bible.  Take, for example, the story of Joseph.  You know the story of Joseph and his 11 brothers.   They were all jealous of Joseph.  It seemed their father showed more favor to Joseph than to any of them.  And their jealousy led to the day when they considered killing him, but instead sold their brother into slavery.  And you know how he ended up in Egypt and, through a series of amazing events, came to hold a position of authority, second only to the Pharaoh.  And you know how his brothers, because of the famine, came to Egypt for grain.  And you know the end of the story, in the final chapter of the book of Genesis.  Joseph’s father dies, and his brothers fear that Joseph, the second most powerful man in the most powerful country in the world, will finally seek his revenge on them for selling him into slavery.  And what does Joseph say?

Genesis 50:20   As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

Or:  What you intended for evil, God intended for good.  

But let me ask you, when Joseph was thrown into a pit and sold into slavery, did he think that was good?  When he was falsely accused and thrown in prison, did he think that was good?  And let me ask you a better question.  Did God think those things were good?

God by no means wanted Joseph’s brothers to treat him poorly.  God did not want Joseph’s brothers to succumb to sin.   He didn’t want Potiphar’s wife to entice Joseph and then falsely accuse him and have him thrown in prison.  God didn’t do that or approve of it. But hear this:  In the end, the circumstances don’t matter.  No matter what evil threw at Joseph, evil didn’t have the last word.  God did not stop people from doing evil; he rarely does that.  But what He always does is to take the evil meant against his people and turn it to good.  

It is the same in our passage in Acts.  What these evil men (including Saul) meant for evil purposes, this persecution of the followers of Jesus, God turns it around and causes the persecution not to diminish the group, but to cause it to spread and increase.  God was saddened by the response of those who would persecute his people.   It breaks his heart when his people turn against each other.  But again, the circumstances do not matter, because God always has the last word.   His will will be done.  He will work it all out to accomplish His purposes.  That brings us back to our scripture this morning.

Acts 9:31  So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

So we come to this time of peace in our scripture this morning, when the followers of Jesus are not under persecution, and they can worship freely.  It was the storm of persecution that led to the church’s spread and growth.  So what happens during this time of peace?  Again, the church grows. 

The circumstances are irrelevant.  Whether it is persecution or peace, God’s people grow.   This world is full of evil people doing evil things.  The Scriptures say that the whole earth is being defiled by sin.  Look at how Isaiah describes it:

Isaiah 24:4-6   The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth languish. The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants, for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse devours the earth….

Isaiah says that our entire planet, which God created as good, suffers and mourns under the weight of sin.  It is full of evil and evil people.  Sin has cursed our world.  So it does not operate as God created it.  There were no natural disasters in the Garden of Eden.  There were no tornadoes, no tsunamis, no hurricanes.  But our world today is not like the garden God made for us.  It is broken.  So you have to expect what we call “natural disasters” to happen. 

Jesus spoke of 2 disasters that had recently occurred.  We find that in Luke 13:

Luke 13:1-5   There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Jesus tells of 2 disasters.  Evil Pilate killing people on the very grounds of the Temple, and a tower that fell in Siloam and killed 18 people.  And for both, he asks them if those who suffered did so because they were worse sinners.  Because people in Jesus’ day felt that God caused or allowed bad things to happen to bad people.  If something bad happened, then you must have sinned.  Remember Job?  Remember the disciples asking Jesus whose sin caused the man to be born blind?    

Sadly, people still think this way.  I have heard people say that if they follow God’s commandments, then God will protect them from disaster.  But Jesus tells us that is not the way God works.  Evil and disaster happen because God gave humanity free choice, and all of us chose sin.  And what is really important is not the disaster of the tower nor Pilate’s slaughter.  What is really important is that we choose to repent of the disaster that we have all brought on our own lives, the disaster of our own sin.   But who the tower falls on is not determined by who is good and who is bad – because we are all bad.  None of us is good.  We all sin and fall short.

Isaiah tells us that natural disasters are only natural in that they are the natural result of sin on the earth.  So don’t blame God when storms or tornadoes or floods come, when towers fall, or evil men commit murder.  That is not the way He meant for the world to be.  And praise Him, one day He will redeem and restore this world to the way He meant for it to be.  But until then, we have to understand that we live in a defiled world full of catastrophes.  And it is the fault of humanity, not God.

But again, hear the good news:  If you belong to Jesus, then learn the lesson of Acts 9.  Learn the lesson of Joseph: Again, the circumstances are irrelevant.   Because each of us lives in a broken world, we all have to expect some bad things to happen.  Things that God never intended to exist in this world.  Things like car accidents, sickness, cancer, theft, child abuse, and murder.  That is not the world God created, but the one we defiled.   But none of those things matter in the long run.  As we see in Joseph’s life and in Acts here, when bad times come, God works them for good.  When peaceful times come, God works for good as well.  God uses times of storm and times of calm.  What sinful people and this defiled world intend for evil, God intends for good.  

And we need that ebb and flow in our own lives.  There are seasons of pressure when we are moved, and there are seasons of calm when we are allowed to grow.  

Anyone doing bodybuilding or weight training will tell you that this is the cornerstone of resistance training.  You push a muscle to its limits, increase the weight, and apply pressure to it. Then you rest it, and it grows.  We now know that what is happening in the muscle is the formation of microtears in the muscle fibers, which the body recognizes as a signal to rebuild stronger to protect against further tears.  You can not achieve results if you don’t put stress on the muscle.  Working out with light weights that do not stress the muscle will not give results.  Similarly, you also can’t see results unless you allow the muscle to recover.  Overtraining, by not allowing time to rest, will also lead to poor results.   You need times of pressure and times of rest.

We need this similar ebb and flow of pressure and peace to develop into the people God wants us to be.  Situations of pressure lead us to see the need for growth, and times of peace give us time to grow.  We see this in the life of Jesus.  There were times when he was in the midst of crowds and times of confrontation.  And he often retreated and withdrew from the crowds for times of peace, for times of prayer.  Times of intense teaching and healing were often followed by times of solitude.  

Even creation echoes this pattern.  There is the growing season, and there is time to let the ground rest.   There is spring, and there is winter.   And God established this pattern for us to live with 6 days to work and one day to rest, to Sabbath. We need both times.  Too much pressure can crush us. Too much peace can soften us.  We will experience times of pressure and times of peace in our lives, and God will use both for our good.

So what season are you in?  A time of testing or pressure, or a time of peace and rest?  If you are in a season of pressure, God may be refining you, pruning some aspect of your life.  Or he may be redirecting you. It may be time for some change.  If you are in a season of peace, that is not the time to coast.  It is the time to deepen your prayer life, redouble your efforts to study the word, and strengthen your faith.  

Whether life comes at you with times of pressure or times of peace, the question to ask is not “Why is this happening?” but instead, “How, Jesus, do you want to refine me in this season?”   

Again, the circumstances life throws at us can be very difficult, but know this: your circumstances do not get the last word; God does.   Or as our friend, whom we left in Tarsus, would say, 

Romans 8:28 “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Or as Joseph would say, “What you intended for evil, God intended for good.”

God is at work in your life every day, taking whatever circumstances life gives you and ultimately causing them to work for your good.  We rejoice today, knowing we have a good, good Father who only gives us good gifts. 

1.  Please see note regarding the term “Helenists” in Acts #28.
2.  Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.1.1.

February 3, 2026 –  But Barnabus…— Acts #28

David Chupp Acts , , , , , , ,

February 3, 2026 –  But Barnabus…— Acts #28
Acts 9:26–30 

We last left Saul in Acts 9, traveling to Arabia to spend some time with God in the wilderness.   His teachers had misled him in interpreting scripture into believing that Jesus was a fraud, and he needed to receive the truth directly from God. So he went to the place where God speaks, the wilderness, and spent 3 years in Arabia, 

In Saul’s day, Arabia referred to the entire region east of Egypt, including the Sinai Peninsula, and west of Israel. Though we have no idea what his itinerary was, I think he likely went to the same mountain of speaking that Moses and Elijah went to, Mount Sinai.

All of Arabia was under the control of the Nabateans, as far north as Damascus. They were descendants of Ishmael and initially nomadic.  They arrived in this region and displaced the Edomites, descendants of Esau.  While in Arabia, Saul likely also spent time in the capital and economic center of Nabataea, Petra.  There, he could practice his trade of leatherwork and tent making as he sought God’s truth in preparation for his work of spreading the Gospels.  

You have probably seen pictures of Petra, a city carved into the desert cliffs.  You enter the city through a narrow passage known as the Siq. This 3/4 mile winding gorge is as narrow as 10 feet in some places, with cliff walls extending as high as 500 feet.

You reach the end, and it opens up on Petra’s most famous building, the Treasury.  A building carved into the sandstone cliffs.  (You may have seen this building in one of the Indiana Jones movies.)

And Petra was an excellent place for Saul to begin his mission.  As God told Ananias:

Acts 9:15  Go, for he [Saul] is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.

Saul’s mission was to the Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel.  Petra was at the crossroads of trade routes from the east to Egypt and became a very wealthy city.  This resulted in a highly diverse population, many of whose members had Jewish ancestry.  So it became a place where Saul could practice his witness to Gentiles, but Gentiles who had some knowledge of Jewish scripture and ways.  And because it was the capital city, Saul might have the opportunity to encounter the king there.  So Saul spent 3 years away from Israel in Arabia.

Acts 9:23-25   But after 3 years, Paul returned to Damascus, where he first met Jesus.“When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night to kill him, but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.

Not quite the reception he had hoped for.  Some Jewish leaders conspired against him, but in 2 Corinthians, Paul provides more detail on this plot.  It originated with the governor of Damascus.

2 Corinthians 11:32-33   At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.

Now, why did the governor of Damascus want to arrest Saul?  Scripture tells us that he was under King Aretas.   Aretas reigned over the area of Damascus, but his capital was in Petra.  This suggests that Saul encountered difficulties with the King while in Petra.

Paul was smuggled out of the city by lowering him in a “basket” (or net).  And now he travels to Jerusalem.  Since it has been three years since he left his Pharisee friends, he hopes he will not be a wanted man there and that he will find acceptance among other Jesus followers in Jerusalem.  But would the followers of Jesus accept him?

Acts 9:26-30    And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. And he spoke and disputed with the Hellenists. But they were seeking to kill him. And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.

Their initial reaction was fear of him.  They thought he was pretending to be a follower of Jesus to infiltrate their group.  The last they heard of Saul, he was putting their friends to death. So let’s see:  He wasn’t welcome in Damascus, not by his former friends in the Sanhedrin, and now not even among the followers of Jesus.   It looked like Saul had no place to call home now.  But the next two words are very important…”but Barnabas.”

Barnabus plays a crucial role here.  Everyone was too afraid to get close enough to Saul to see if he was a genuine follower.   They were scared.  But Barnabus was willing to take the risk to approach Saul.  And because he did, see what Luke tells us happened next.  Saul can preach boldly about Jesus in Jerusalem because Barnabas took a chance on him. Let’s look at this character Barnabus and see what made him different than these other followers who were too scared to reach out to Saul. 

First, notice that Luke doesn’t single out a few scared disciples. He says, “They were all afraid of him.”  Fear had consensus.  That is usually the case.  But there was Barnabus.  Do you think Barnabus was scared, too?  Of course, he was.  But the difference was that when everyone else stepped back in fear, Barnabus stepped forward in faith.  He was not being naive.  He was not being reckless.  But he had the faith that God could really change people, even an enemy like Saul.  

What would God have done without Barnabas, who was able to convince the apostles to accept Saul?  What would have happened to Saul’s mission if Barnabas hadn’t taken that risk?  What would God have done?  As we discussed over a month ago, whatever God wills to happen will happen.  If Barnabas had not stepped up, God’s plan for Barnabas would have been thwarted, but not God’s plan for the world.  As we saw before, as with Jonah, he may have given Barnabas another chance, or, as with King Saul, he may have found someone else who would be obedient.  God loves to give us second chances to do the right thing, but he will not allow one man’s disobedience to derail his plans.

By approaching Saul, Barnabas was risking his safety, his reputation, and his standing with the apostles if Saul was not sincere.  And Barnabas had no guarantee that Saul had changed.  He had been gone for 3 years, and the last time they saw him, he was hunting them.  If Saul was lying, then Barnabas risked looking foolish and endangering himself and the others.  Faith often includes the possibility of being wrong. But Barnabas chooses to trust God’s work over his own fear.  This is the risk faith requires.   But this is who Barnabus has always been.  

Let’s take a quick look at what we know about Barnabus from the Book of Acts.  We first meet him in chapter 4.

Acts 4:36   Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus,

So his actual name was Joseph.  Barnabus was a nickname that our translation says means “son of encouragement.”  It is a Hebrew name, Bar-Nabba, meaning “son of a prophet.”  A prophet is not so much someone who foretells, but one who proclaims God’s message. And God’s message is good news; it is encouragement.   And he is from the land of Cyprus. Cyprus is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Turkey and Syria.  It had a thriving Jewish population due to trade, but was primarily composed of Gentiles. Then the next verse tells us:

Acts 4:36-37 “Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.”

We meet Barnabus in Jerusalem; he is the first to sell land and give the proceeds to support the poor among them.  Barnabus was willing to take a financial risk.  He stepped up in faith when there were others in need.  This is just who he was.

Let’s jump ahead in Acts, a few chapters, after the stoning of Stephen, to see more of Barnabus.  The persecution in Jerusalem had caused some followers to spread far, but there was a problem in Antioch.

Acts 11:19-22   Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.

Initially, the message of Jesus, the Messiah, was only shared with other Jews.  But in Antioch, they witnessed to the “Helenists also”, that is, the Greeks, people who were not Jewish.1  Word reaches Jerusalem that non-Jews are following Jesus.  And they didn’t know what to do about that.  Others had always been able to join with them in the Jewish faith, even at the time of the Exodus, but that involved a formal procedure and questioning.  They had to agree to follow Jewish laws regarding the Sabbath, food, and ritual purity.  These apostles had always considered their belief in Jesus as a continuation of their Jewish faith.  What should they do with these Gentiles who wanted to join them?  What should they expect from these Greek followers?  Do they need to go through the age-old process to become a part of the Jewish faith?

Someone needed to go to Antioch to assess the situation and help decide what they should do.  And Barnabus is the obvious choice.  Some of the Jews sharing Jesus with the Greeks were from Cyprus and Cyrene, both places with a large Gentile population.  Barnabus was from Cyprus.  And Barnabus’s experience in dealing with Saul might come in handy.  Luke tells us what happened then:

Acts 11:23-24   When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord.

Barnabus goes to Antioch and, as he did with Saul, sees past the problems and sees the potential of the people there.  Then Barnabus does a really good thing.  Who would be best to help this young group of Jesus followers, with a mixture of Gentiles and Jews?  Saul, of course, trained as a Jewish Rabbi, but was called to preach the gospel of Jesus to the Gentiles.  Acts 11:25-26   So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year, they met with the church and taught a large number of people.

Note that Barnabus stays here for a year with them.  He moves to Antioch for a year to help Saul.  He is a man of commitment.  There is one more scene in the life of Barnabus I’d like us to take a look at.  

In Acts 15, the Jesus followers are still struggling with the same question of what to do with these Gentiles who are accepting Jesus.  Should they make them stop eating pork?  Should they have to follow all the rules of the Rabbis?   They hold a major conference in Jerusalem and reach a compromise decision.  We will talk more about that when we get there.  But then, following this conference, they sent Saul and Barnabus out as missionaries to the Gentiles with this word.

Acts 15:36-38  And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.” Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John, called Mark. But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.  

Saul/Paul wants to revisit all the areas they have been in before to assess them.  Barnabus agreed, but he wanted to take John Mark with them. John Mark was actually a cousin of Barnabas.  Paul disagreed because of an earlier event.  John Mark was on their previous missionary journey, and at one point, Luke tells us:

Acts 13:13   “Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem,”   

Luke doesn’t tell us why John Mark left them and returned home, but apparently, Paul was very unhappy about it.

Acts 15:36-39“And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are.” Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John, called Mark. But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other.”

They had a sharp disagreement.   They had words.  Barnabus wanted to give John Mark another chance.  Again, it was his cousin, but this is what Barnabus would do for anyone.  He doesn’t regard John Mark as a deserter, a failure, or a problem.  Again, as with his encounter with Saul, he doesn’t see the problem; he sees the potential.  He looks past the mistake to see the grace.  This is Barnabas’ character.  So look what God does here.

Acts 15:39-41“Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.God takes this disagreement between two preachers and, instead of causing the failure of their mission, increases it twofold.   That is what God always does.  He transforms our failures into multiplied successes.  So we end up with not one but two missionary journeys.

We later find that Barnabas was correct about John Mark.  He went on to do much and authored our Gospel of Mark.  And he and Paul reconciled.  Paul writes in his letter to Timothy:

2 Timothy 4:9-11   Do your best to come to me soon. … Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.”

And again, we have Barnabus to thank for this.  Because he thought young John Mark needed another chance, Barnabus saw that God was not finished with John Mark.  Again, he saw grace, not guilt, potential, not problem. 

But before we close this section, I want to go back to that passage in Acts 15 where Paul and Barnabas have their disagreement.

Acts 15:39 “And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other.

The Greek word we see translated as “sharp disagreement” is “paroxysmos”.   The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says it means: “to spur,” “to stir to anger,” “to be provoked, incensed.”  Provocation is usually seen as a negative thing.  We see the verb form of this word in Ephesians 6:4. 

Ephesians 6:4 “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

But again, the noun form is only in the Bible twice.  First, here, describing the “sharp disagreement” between Paul and Barnabus, and the second time in the book of Hebrews.  The book of Hebrews does not identify its author, but most scholars believe the author was Barnabas.  And here is the other verse with paroxysmos:

Hebrews 10:24-25 “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Let us consider how to paroxysmos one another.  Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good works. This is so something that would come from the pen of our Barnabas, our son of encouragement.  Leave it to him to take a word that is usually negative and make it positive.   You may want to call him an optimist, seeing only the good, but Barnabas had the ability to see all the good from God.  I call that faith.  As he did with other followers, with Paul, and with John Mark, he was always seeking ways to encourage others to reach their potential in Jesus.  He refused to allow someone’s past actions to dictate their future.  He was always ready to see God’s grace and forgiveness in action in the lives of others.  

I don’t know about you, but I think the world needs more Barnabases.  I think we all need to develop the Barnabus within us. When everyone else steps back in fear, we need someone who will step forward in faith. When people view someone as a failure, we need someone who will see them as someone God can use.

Who is today’s Saul?  Who is today’s John Mark?  People need someone to believe in them.  Our young people need someone willing to see their possibilities and provoke them to reach their potential in Christ.  

The world is full of people who have made mistakes and failed in life, who need someone to see beyond their past and help them consider their future.  Shirley and I have seen many who have come through our homeless program or have served jail sentences who just need one person who will believe in them, give them another chance, and stand by them.  We all have our faults.  We all need the gift of grace from God, and we need the gift of grace from each other.  I want us all to pray and ask God to help us be the Barnabas in someone’s life.  

This is what Barnabus would say to us today:

Hebrews 10:24-25 “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Let this be our prayer.  Father, fill us with your Holy Spirit that we may be like Barnabus.  Urge us to consider how we can provoke one another to love and good works.  

  1. The text clearly means non-Jewish people (Gentiles), but this same term is also used in Acts 9.29 to mean Greek-speaking Jews. This is likely a manuscript problem as noted in the Tyndale Commentary: “Luke must mean Gentiles, but the text is uncertain. Instead of ‘Greeks’, the majority of the MSS (including Codex Vaticanus) have ‘Hellenists’, the word used in 6:1 and 9:29 to designate Greek-speaking Jews.”

January 11, 2026 –  The Place of Speaking— Acts #27

David Chupp Acts

January 11, 2026 –  The Place of Speaking— Acts #27
Acts 9:1–30 

We discussed last week how Saul went into the Jewish synagogue to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.  But he didn’t get the response he wanted.  Rather than being convinced, they became confused.  And they started to get agitated.  It wasn’t as easy as Saul thought it would be. Let’s pick up in Acts where we left off with the following two verses:

Acts 9:22  But Saul became more and more capable, and was causing confusion among the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ. 

Acts 9:23 Now, after some days had passed, the Jews plotted together to kill him…

“After some days had passed….”   Now I read that today, and I wonder how many days?  Maybe a week or two?  What you might miss is that Luke, telling the story of the early Jesus followers, skips 3 years here. There are 3 years between Acts 9:22 and 23. Now, if Luke’s purpose in the book were to tell the life story of this man Saul, he would have included material between these 2 verses.   While Saul is an essential figure in Acts, it is not a biography.  So Luke skips that part of Saul’s life.   But we need to understand that these were crucial years for Saul.

 Since people are not responding, as he intended, Saul needs to back up and consider things. And thankfully, Saul tells us what happened in these three years in his letter to the Galatians:

Galatians 1:11-14   For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.

Saul needed some time.  He met Jesus a week ago on the road to Damascus.  He had a call on his life to share Jesus with everyone.  But how could he share what he had just discovered himself?   He had studied these scriptures for so long, and he now realized they led to Jesus, but he needed some time to work through this.  His old framework for understanding scripture needed to be dismantled and rebuilt in the light of Jesus. 

Saul tells us how he came to understand the gospel he was preaching to the Jesus followers in Galatia.  It wasn’t man’s gospel.  Before meeting Jesus on the Damascus Road, Saul had done a lot of preaching of man’s gospel.  He had been trained by the best men, the greatest rabbis. And Saul says, I was the star student.  I absorbed everything they taught me like a sponge.   I was at the top of the class in knowing the gospel of man.  Saul says, I was the expert in the traditions of my fathers.  But that was the wrong gospel.  It was man’s version, not God’s.

He tells the group of Jesus followers in Galatia that the gospel that he taught them, the story of Jesus, was not something some man taught him.  He didn’t sit in a classroom taking notes on Jesus.  He didn’t go to a Bible Study.  He didn’t sit and listen to some preacher tell him about Jesus.  He got it directly from Jesus himself.  He didn’t seek out men in Damascus to teach him.  He didn’t go to Jerusalem, where Jesus’ disciples were, to discuss it with them.  So what did he do? He went away into Arabia.    He said he received this message straight from Jesus.  

Jesus came to Saul on that road with a blinding light and told Saul that he had it all wrong.  Saul was out hunting down these Jesus followers and taking them back to be punished in Jerusalem, and he thought he was fighting for God.  But Jesus said, “You are not fighting for God; you are fighting against God. You are persecuting me.”

Saul gets this wake-up call from Jesus, but let me tell you, that one experience with Jesus is not enough for Saul.  That gospel of man that he had been preaching had to be thrown out, and Saul had to start back from scratch.  He needed to understand the real gospel, and Saul was not about to trust that some man was going to give him the correct answer.  He has already made that mistake once.  No, he wants to learn the truth from the one who is the truth.  No more intermediary.  He has to get the story straight, direct from God himself.  So Saul goes to Arabia.

Arabia in the first century included much of what we call Saudi Arabia today, but it extended west to the Sinai Peninsula and north to the latitude of the Sea of Galilee.  We don’t know where exactly Paul went in Arabia.  He could have gone as far as Mount Sinai here and may have spent time in the city of Petra here, but wherever he went, he would have spent a lot of time in the wilderness, for most of Arabia is a desert wilderness.

Saul has a lot to work through.  He needed to work through his own forgiveness before he could proclaim forgiveness to others.  He was carrying a lot of guilt.  He had voted to have Jesus’ followers stoned. He watched as Stephen was killed for proclaiming Jesus.  He was hunting them down like animals.  He had to come to grips with his own forgiveness.  

He had lived his entire life under Levitical law, with all its requirements and sacrifices, seeking atonement for his sins, yet knowing that there was no offering in the Scriptures for intentional sin.  Under Levitical law, if you sinned purposely, there was no offering that could be given.  You had to depend on grace.  If you thought that the Jews only relied on the law and didn’t understand grace, you need to reread the Old Testament. 

They knew they had no hope outside God’s grace.  Sacrificial offerings were never enough.  Now that Saul has found the truth of Jesus’ offering for sin, Saul wondered, “Could there be atonement for purposeful sins?”  Does Jesus’ sacrifice for us cover even that?  Saul had to work this out and then find forgiveness for his personal campaign of terror against Jesus.  Saul was a man undone.  He needed more revelation from Jesus himself. 

And where do you go when you want to hear directly from God?  Sure, God can speak to us anywhere, but let me ask you, “Where do you go when you want to hear from God?”  If you are familiar with the Bible, like Saul, then you know where to go – you go to the wilderness. The wilderness is where God speaks.

I have mentioned before that Hebrew is a language of few words.  Very commonly, the names of places are not unique, but are derived from the activity that happens at that place. For example, in Hebrew, the verb “to slaughter” or “to sacrifice” is ‘zavach’.  The word for the place where sacrifices happen, the altar, is “mizbeach”—same consonants with the ‘mem’ or our letter ‘m’ as a prefix.    

Another example: the word for “holy” is ‘qodesh’.  You add the mem (m) to the beginning, and you get miqdash, the place that is holy, or sanctuary. And one more: take the Hebrew word for ‘sunset’, ‘arav’.  Again, add the mem and you to the place where sunset happens. ‘ma’a rav’, the Hebrew word for “west”, because that is where the sunset occurs.    The psalmist says God will separate our sins from us as far as the east is from the ma’arav.  (Psalm 103:12)

And I have shown you all that to show you this:  The Hebrew verb “to speak” is ‘dibber.’  Again, add the mem to create the Hebrew word for the place where speaking happens, ‘midbar.’  And ‘midbar’ is the Hebrew word for the wilderness.  So, literally, in the Hebrew Bible, the place where speaking happens is the wilderness. 

And that is odd, because the wilderness is a place of barrenness, emptiness, loneliness.  There is no one there.  This is the place where the language of the Bible says that speaking occurs.  But if there is no one there, who speaks in the wilderness?  I can not overstate the importance of this concept in Scripture.  The wilderness is where God speaks.  Let me give you a few examples.

Moses – Moses entered the wilderness not by choice.  He was adopted to be a prince in Pharaoh’s court but was kicked out of Egypt for murder.   In the Egyptians’ minds, it was a death sentence.  For them, the wilderness was where you went to die.  There was nothing there.   No food, no water. 

Look at this Google Earth view of Egypt.  Notice the thin ribbon of green in a sea of brown.  The green is the fertile land surrounding the Nile, the most fertile land in the world.  But take one step past the waters of the Nile, and you are in the wilderness, where nothing grows, where there is only death.  Aside from the delta, Egypt is a narrow ribbon of green, with the rest desert.  Let me give you another view.

This is from about 200 feet in the air.  Egypt has the richest farmland in the world.  Thousands of years of Nile flooding, bringing rich deposits of silt, have created topsoil layers several feet thick.  This view was from last fall in one of these:

And we floated in a basket out over the ribbon of green that accompanies the Nile.

These particular fields were corn or sorghum.   The fertility of this land is fantastic.  But go up a little higher, and you can see where the green ends.

You can see a sharply demarcated line that divides rich farmland from desert and wilderness.   A place with no water, where nothing grows, a place where you die.  Who would ever leave this lush land and go to this land of death?  To be banished to the wilderness is to be sent to die.  But Moses doesn’t die; he survives and thrives. He spends 40 years in the wilderness, the same wilderness Saul entered.  It was a time of deep introspection that Moses needed.  And after 40 years, when Moses is ready, he encounters God in a burning bush on the mountain, Sinai.

Moses’ time in the wilderness became a season of preparation, where his own past in Egypt and his 40 years of shepherding would serve him as he led Israel through that same wilderness for 40 years. What started as a death sentence —a time of punishment for Moses —became a path to his purpose—a training ground for the mission God had prepared for him.  In the wilderness, God spoke to Moses.

Elijah — Elijah fled to the wilderness after his battle with the prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel.  You know the story.   God sends Elijah to King Ahaz to tell him there will be a drought and famine due to the nation’s worship of the false god, Baal.  God takes care of Elijah during the famine, first by ravens bringing him food and later through a widow whose jar of flour and oil never run out.  Then there is a confrontation between the prophets of Baal and Elijah on Mt Carmel.  Both are to build an altar, and whichever god brings down fire on their altar would be the true god.  So Yehovah brings down the fire, and in judgment, Elijah slaughters the prophets of Baal. 

Then Queen Jezebel is angry at Elijah for killing her prophets and swears to kill him.  Elijah flees to escape Jezebel.   After this great victory, he is depressed.  He feels he is the only prophet of Yehovah left in the world.  He flees to the wilderness, where he just wants to die.  He ends up at Sinai, the same mountain where God spoke to Moses.  And Elijah sits alone in a cave on the mountain.  Loneliness is hard.  But the wilderness of loneliness can be a gift because in those times, God can speak.

And in this lonely wilderness, God speaks to Elijah, telling him he is not alone.  God restores his strength and comforts him. There, you remember, God didn’t appear in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a “still small voice,” revealing Himself not in overwhelming power but in gentle presence, speaking to Elijah, giving him new tasks, and assuring him that he is not alone.  There are 7,000 faithful Israelites who remain.  In the wilderness, God speaks and restores Elijah’s hope. 

And there is David, who flees to the wilderness as a fugitive from King Saul, who hunts him relentlessly.  There are times when David thinks he has come to the wilderness to die.  But there he learns to trust deeply in God to provide for him.  And it is there that David learns to listen to God speak, in the land of speaking.  And there he sings out to God in psalms like this:

Psalm 63:1-4   O God, You are my God;  Earnestly I seek You;
My soul thirsts for You;     My body longs for You
In a dry and weary land    Where there is no water. 
I have seen You in the sanctuary, 
 Beheld Your power and Your glory. 
Because Your love is better than life,   My lips will glorify You. 
I will praise you as long as I live,
And in your name, I will lift up my hands.

David grew closer to God in the trials of the wilderness, the place where God speaks.

And then there is Jesus, who, after his baptism, was “driven to the wilderness” by the Spirit.  He spends 40 days in prayer and fasting to the Father in preparation for his ministry.  But Jesus’ story reminds us that in this land of speaking, there may be more than the voice of God.  For in the wilderness, where there are no other people or distractions, there are two voices one may listen to: our Father God, and the accuser, the satan.  Jesus gains insight and instruction from the Father, but he is also tempted by the accuser.  In the wilderness, there is a voice to heed and a voice to reject.  

So we see that Biblical characters end up in the wilderness for different reasons.   Moses is sent there as a death sentence.  Elijah flees in depression and loneliness.  David flees from an unjust king, and Jesus is driven by the Spirit.  I didn’t mention the first person in the Bible who is seen in the wilderness.

It is Hagar, the slave that the Pharaoh of Egypt gave to Abraham and Sarah; tradition tells us she was a princess in Pharaoh’s court.  But Sarah and Abraham mistreat her sexually, and Hagar bears them a son, and then they kick her out of their home into the wilderness to die.  Twice, Hagar is in the wilderness, but there God sees her and speaks to her. 

And look at this parallel:  400 years after Hagar. Moses, a prince in Pharaoh’s court, is kicked out of his home into the wilderness to die, and there Moses hears God speak to him.  This slave turned prince of Egypt was kicked out to the wilderness to die because he took a life. Again, that was 400 years after Hagar, a princess of Egypt, turned slave, kicked out to the wilderness to die because she brought life into the world.

These two people with exactly opposite circumstances both end up in the wilderness, where they are expected to die, but where God speaks to them. These mirror-image stories illustrate an important point:  No matter your circumstances, find your way to the wilderness, for that is where God speaks.

Where do you go to hear God speak?   Don’t tell me you go to YouTube.  God doesn’t have a channel there.   Don’t tell me you listen to Christian music or watch a church service on TV, or attend a small country church.   Saul would ask you to be very careful listening to the gospel of men.

All of those can be good things. But again, Saul would tell you that you need to hear from God Himself to avoid being off track by listening to the traditions of men.  There are some great Christian books and Christian Music out there.  But some contain some really odd ideas about God.  There are some great teachers and preachers out there, but again, you have to be careful you aren’t just getting Man’s Gospel.  Remember what Paul said:

Acts 17:11  “Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”

If not for Jesus stopping Saul in his tracks on the Damascus Road, Saul would have wasted his whole life.  Saul was giving 100% for God, but he was 100% wrong. That is what he got for following man’s gospel and traditions instead of the real gospel of Jesus.   So Saul went to Arabia, to the wilderness, because he knew that was where God spoke.  And he wasn’t about to be fooled by another person.  So Saul encouraged all his listeners to follow his example and that of these Berean Jews.  Saul said, “Listen eagerly to what I say, but don’t take my word for it.  Never just accept what any man says.  Study the scriptures yourself every day to make sure you are getting it straight from God.”

Do you want to commune with God?  Do you want to hear God speak?  Then find a lonely, quiet place, open his Word, and pray and listen. It may be on a hike in the woods.  It might be in your backyard.  It might be in a quiet room of your house at 4 am. God desperately wants a relationship with you.  He wants that so much that he sent His son to pay the penalty, the debt we owe for our sins.  God wants to speak to you, but he can’t be heard over the noise that we constantly surround ourselves with.  We all need to go to some form of wilderness to hear God speak.  Go with me to the wilderness — God is waiting for you there.

January 6, 2025 –  What Saul Does Next— Acts #26

David Chupp Acts ,

December 3, 2025 –  What Saul Does Next— Acts #26
Acts 9:1–30 

Saul had his experience with Jesus on the road to Damascus.  He continued into Damascus, where, after 3 days, God sent Ananias so that Saul could regain his vision and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  So what does Saul do next?

Acts 9:19-22   For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus. And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” And all who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?” But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

Saul wasted no time in spreading the message of Jesus.  He “immediately” talked about Jesus in the Jewish synagogues, making it clear that He was not just some great teacher, but he was the Messiah that they had prayed for, the Son of God.  And how did the synagogue’s congregation respond? 

“All who heard him were amazed.”  Remember, as you read your Bible, to slow down.  If you really want to understand what is going on, you have to look at the story from the point of view of all the characters.  Saul comes walking into this synagogue.  Some of the Jews there (likely a minority) believe that Jesus is the Messiah.  Some do not.  Yet they have been meeting together without problems.  They all continued to see themselves as Jews and did not see this difference of opinion as incompatible with worshipping the same God. 

In Jesus’ day, different Jewish sects worshipped together and had been doing so for years.  For example, the Pharisees and Sadducees had very different theological ideas.  The Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife, but the Pharisees did.  The Sadducees believed only the first 5 books of the Bible, while the Pharisees included the rest of what we call the Old Testament as their authoritative scripture. 

They had what we would call significant differences, but they worshipped the same God, and they worshipped together.   Can you imagine that?   Now, we feel like we can’t worship with someone who immerses if we sprinkle or vice versa.  “Oh, they believe in eternal security; we can’t worship there.”  Or “They sing with guitars” or “they sing with those ancient hymn books”.  Or they get out too late, or you name it.  We tend to find numerous reasons why we can’t worship with other Jesus followers.  

It wasn’t such a big deal in Jesus and Saul’s day, and even into the early centuries of Christianity.  But now we have several hundred main denominations, and some say there are 45,000 total denominations.  I think that number is a bit high, but there are indeed too many.   This number multiplied greatly after the Protestant Reformation due to differing interpretations of Scripture. 

There is an old story of a man stranded alone on a deserted island. After many years, a ship sails close by the island, and the man is rescued. The ship’s captain comes ashore, notices the three huts that the man built, and asks, “Tell me about these huts.” The man replies, “The first hut is my home, and the second hut is my church.” The captain asks, “What is the third hut?” The man replies, “Oh, that is where I used to go to church before I got mad.”

Timothy Tennent, who served for 15 years as president of Asbury Theological Seminary and is now on the faculty of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, says we should see God’s church not as a business but as a family, with Jesus as its head.  As with any family, it can be a group that exhibits both diversity and unity.  We all have differences, but we are united because we are family. And we should come together to focus on Jesus, what we have in common.  Tennent says, “We must learn to think of ourselves as members of a massive global Christian movement that is looking more and more like John’s vision in Revelation 7:9, which encompasses people from every nation, tribe, people, and language.” 1

Despite their differences, the Jews in the first century were united in their belief in the one true God and in worship at the one temple. There was only one place in the world where sacrifices could be made on an altar.  There was one place that they were commanded to travel to for the festivals. That single location helped to unite them, for there was nowhere else in the world to worship as they were commanded.  Now we have churches on every corner.  We no longer have unity in a location, and it seems as if we have forgotten our unity in the one true God.  We sacrifice our unity in Jesus for petty beliefs or, sometimes even worse, for traditions.  We forget that there is still only one temple.

Only one temple?   Let’s take a deeper look at that.  One problem with our English translations is that the word ‘you’ can be used either singularly or in plural.  For example, you are sitting in a room with fellow workers when your boss comes in and says, “I need you to finish this report by 5 PM.”  He walks out, and your co-worker across the table gets up to leave and says to you, “Well, David, you better get on it then.”  But  you say, “Hey, he meant for all of us to work on the report.”  Did he mean you singular or you plural?  There is a difference.  Take the following verse:

1 Corinthians 6:19   Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?”

Is Saul talking to one person or to a group of people?  Now, if these are singular ‘you’s’ then Saul is saying that each individual is God’s Temple and God’s Spirit dwells in each one of us individually.  Fortunately, unlike English, in both Greek and Hebrew, there are different words for the singular and plural forms of ‘you’, so we know they are all plural here.  So it should read this way:

1 Corinthians 3:16   Do you all not know that all of you together are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you all?

We all together are God’s temple.  God dwells in us collectively as a community of believers and as the universal church. (I need to add that there is a verse where Saul talks about God’s spirit dwelling on individual believers, but his main emphasis is about the spirit dwelling on us as a community.) God dwells with us as a church just as he chose to dwell among the children of Israel on their journey to the promised land.  Remember, he told Moses:

Exodus 25:8   And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.”

This has been God’s goal since Adam and Eve sinned and put a wall of separation between them and God, and were put out of the Garden.  God desires to live with us, to tabernacle with us.  John tells us that:

John 1:14   And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…

Jesus came to dwell among us for a time.  And since Jesus removed the wall of sin that separated us from God, we can now, together, be the temple where God dwells.  He dwells with us now through His Holy Spirit and will one day make that complete when there is no more separation, no more sin, no more death.  Or as Saul writes:

1 Thessalonians 4:17   Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Saul again, in his letter to the Ephesians, talks even more clearly about how we, together, are God’s temple:

Ephesians 2:19-22   So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

All of us are joined together on the cornerstone of Jesus to be the one holy temple, the one dwelling place for God by the Spirit.   We, together as the followers of Jesus, are God’s dwelling place.   We need to be united in this one temple just as the Jews in Saul’s day were united in one temple.  For the world we live in is changing, and you can probably see that it will become increasingly challenging to be a Jesus follower. 

The percentage of believers is dropping rapidly in the US, even in the Bible Belt.  In many areas of the country, it is already unpopular to be a follower of Jesus.  We need to band together as a family with Jesus as our head.  There is one God, and there is one Church.  We have to learn to work together in partnership with other churches in our community, because we are all on the same team.

And in this synagogue in Damascus, Jews who follow Jesus and those who do not continue to meet together.  Then Saul walks in.  And everyone there knew why he was there.  He is there bringing letters from the council in Jerusalem to have these Jesus followers arrested.  He has come to arrest and carry back to Jerusalem some of the members of their congregation.  But he doesn’t arrest anyone.  In fact, he starts talking about how this Jesus is the “Son of God.”

It is just the opposite of the message they expected to hear.  So they were ‘amazed.’  Other translations say ‘astonished’ or ‘astounded.’ They are shocked and confused.  You could have knocked them over with a feather.  This expert in their religion comes with the authority of the religious leaders, but he starts speaking the message that they said was blasphemy.   Saul is speaking the exact words for which they thought he came to arrest people for saying.  What happened?

Saul’s entire way of understanding scripture has flipped upside down in the past week.  He had studied the Scriptures his whole life and memorized them.  He was sure of what they meant.  He would have bet his life on it.  Remember that Saul was there when Stephen was stoned.  Remember that Stephen gave a long review of the scriptures before he was killed.  Saul had heard Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7 explaining how the scriptures show the rejection of God’s prophets leads to the rejection of Jesus.  

Saul was there and heard it all. But it did not affect him, for he had already decided Stephen was a blasphemer.  He shuts his ears to the story of God dealing with Abraham and all of their forefathers that Stephen had used to explain God’s purpose and their rejection of God’s plan.  Don’t you know that the words of Stephen rang in Saul’s ears after he encountered Jesus, for Saul had rejected Stephen just as his peers had denied Jesus, and his forefathers had rejected the prophets before them.

Stephen and Saul studied the same scripture, the same history, but came to different conclusions.  Saul did not lack education; he lacked perspective.  And what made the difference in Saul’s upside-down interpretation of the Scriptures?  He met Jesus.  And then he considered the scriptures with the knowledge of Jesus.  And he saw the truth of the scriptures he had missed all his life.  He had the best education, he trained under the best, but he had misunderstood.  If you ignore the idea of a Messiah when you read the Scriptures, you can not possibly understand.

And now here is that same Saul who had voted to have Stephen stoned for blasphemy, using that same scripture and the same explanation Stephen used.  Can you imagine their confusion?  Luke tells us they were “confounded.”   Let’s do a word study.  For those of you who like word studies, this will be great. If you don’t, then just bear with me for a few minutes.

Acts 9:22   But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

The Greek word translated as “confounded”  is ‘syncheō’, derived from two Greek words: “syn”, which means ‘together’, and ‘cheō’, which means ‘to pour.’  Literally, it means “to pour together.”  This is the Greek word that the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was around in Jesus and Saul’s day, uses for the Hebrew ‘balal’, which means ‘to mix’, as in grain sacrifices, where flour is mixed with oil.  

Exodus 29:40   And with the first lamb a tenth measure of fine flour mingled with a fourth of a hin of beaten oil, and a fourth of a hin of wine for a drink offering.

It is the idea of taking something simple and pure, and pouring or mixing something into it, and it is now different.  We have a very similar word in English.  Confusion, which comes from the Latin confundere, which also means “to pour together, mix, mingle, disorder.”  And now you can see how we moved from there in English to our phrase “mixed up” for confusion, and then even further to “agitated” or “stirred up.”

The first time we see the word ‘balal’ (‘syncheō’ in Greek) in the Bible is in Genesis 11.

Genesis 11:7   Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.

‘Confuse’ is our Greek word ‘syncheo’.  What God did at Babel was to take their single, simple language and mix it with other languages, as one would add oil to flour when making a cake.  And by making this mixture, the people are confused.  That is the idea behind the word.

We also see the Greek syncheō in the mirror of this Babel story that we have covered in Acts 2.  There, at Pentecost, God reversed the act at Babel.  There, he removed the language differences so that everyone could understand.

Acts 2:6  And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

But this sudden ability to understand all these foreign languages leaves the people syncheo (bewildered), literally mixed up, for the world as they knew it suddenly changed.   What they thought was impossible just happened to them.  And this is the same word translated as ‘confounded’ in our passage today:

Acts 9:22   But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

So when Saul comes in, they are expecting him to carry off these Jesus followers in chains, but he comes in and says he is a Jesus follower and tries to convince them they should be also.  It is no wonder they are “mixed up.”  Well, people don’t like to be ‘confused,’ so if it is unresolved, they move from mixed up to a more intense state, stirred up or agitated. And this crowd in Damascus will get so agitated that it reaches the point of violence, but we will talk about that later.

And the verse says, “Saul increased all the more in strength.”  What does that mean?  Saul is not going to the gym or working out with weights.  I think the NET Bible translates this well as it says, “But Saul became more and more capable…”.

Over time, Saul grew better at presenting the scriptures as they pointed to Jesus.  But he quickly discovered that it wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought.  The people are just mixed up and becoming stirred up.  This was not what he wanted.  So Saul is about to change strategies.  

He can’t stay in Damascus, as things aren’t going well for him there. He is not leading people to understand how the scriptures point to Jesus, but he is leading them into confusion.   He sure can’t return to Jerusalem, where they are punishing the followers of Jesus.  So he goes where every prophet goes to get instruction from God. He goes to the wilderness, to Arabia.  Next week, we will talk about Saul spending the next three years in Arabia.

But let me review the two points I want you to take home from today’s passage.

  1.   The community of Jesus followers joins together to be the place where God dwells.  We are where the Spirit dwells in our community and are responsible for being that light where we live.  And the universal church is God’s Temple in our world, the city on the hill where the light of Jesus will spread to the world.  We worship one God, and we are one Temple.  We should act that way.  We have to learn to get along and work together.
  2. (And this is the big one.)  To understand the Bible, you must grasp its big picture and see how it all leads to Jesus.   Saul and Stephen read the same scriptures but came to different conclusions until Saul had a dramatic event that changed his perspective and enabled him to interpret the Scriptures correctly.  That event was coming face-to-face with Jesus.  Without Jesus, we can not correctly understand God’s Word.

This is why it is so essential to understand the big picture of what God is doing in the story of the Bible.  Can you imagine taking one piece of a 1000-piece puzzle, studying it, and trying to understand which piece it represents if you aren’t able to see the big picture the puzzle forms?  But that is precisely what we are doing when we study a small piece of the Bible without knowing the big picture.

You should be able to tell someone the story of the Bible in less than two minutes. The Bible is a big book, and many people find it hard to understand.  But the basic story is not complicated.   God created the universe we live in. And he made people. He made this world a place where we can live with him.  But Adam and Eve decided they didn’t want to live by God’s rules for the world he built.  So they rebelled, we call that sin. 

And since they didn’t want to live by God’s rules, they had to leave.  That is the first three chapters of Genesis.  The rest of the Bible is the story of God designing a way to reunite Himself with His people, because He wanted to dwell with them.  So he tried to give them instructions for how to live, but they continued to rebel.  The only way we could learn to be obedient was for God to place his own Spirit upon us.  But our guilt and sin were in the way.  Someone had to pay the price of the penalty for this sinful rebellion.

And only a man who had never rebelled could pay the price.  But none could be found.  All people sinned and fell short.  So God sent His son to be the one human who would not rebel or sin.  And He would pay the price for all of our rebellion.  And so Jesus came and demonstrated a life of following God, and then he died on a cross as payment for our sins.  And as proof of God’s acceptance of this sacrifice, God raised him from the dead. 

And if we accept that payment, and agree to follow Jesus’ instructions and His way of living, then our debt is paid, and the wall that separated us from God is removed, and now God’s spirit can dwell with us, and He will empower us to live that life we couldn’t before.  And the final part of God’s plan is to one day remove all sin, and all of the consequences of sin, all the pain and death.  And then we will dwell with God forever, just as He designed it in the beginning.

That is the story of the Bible in less than 2 minutes.  That is the story of this entire universe.  That is what the rabbi Saul didn’t understand.  Though he had studied the scriptures all his life, he missed the main point…. he missed Jesus because he didn’t see the big picture of the Bible.  But then one day, he met Jesus, and the light bulb came on for him.  Suddenly, he began to understand the story of the Bible. 

So many people say they don’t understand the Bible.  And I agree, sometimes it is hard.  We are reading a book that is thousands of years old, speaking of vastly different cultures and times.  It takes a little work to read ancient literature and understand what they were thinking and doing.  But I am a firm believer that God rewards people who take the time to read His book.

I believe that God gives insight to those who earnestly seek and ask.  But it is meant to be read in community.  That is why we gather together to study.  That is why many of us are reading 3-4 chapters daily and discussing them.  We are all pilgrims on a path to God.  Let us all walk together.

  1. Tennent, Timothy. Theology in the Context of World Christianity. 2007.

December 30, 2025 –  Looking Back to Move Ahead—

David Chupp Uncategorized , , , , ,

December 30, 2025 –  Looking Back to Move Ahead—
A New Year’s Eve Message

A family anticipates the birth of a child.  High School and College Students anticipate graduation.  A patient anticipates test results. Just last week, children around the world had trouble sleeping due to the anticipation of Christmas morning.  And in just a few days, 1 million people will gather in Times Square, New York, in anticipation of a lighted ball sliding down a pole.1

Anticipation carries excitement—but also tension—joy—but also uncertainty.  And Scripture tells us plainly: God’s people are an anticipating people.  From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is not a story of instant fulfillment.  It is the story of men and women who lived in the space between promise and completion, between the now and the not yet —trusting that God would finish what He had begun.  Anticipation is closely tied to hope.  And Hope is the subject of our first week of Advent.   But the Bible does not use the word ‘hope’ the same way we do.

When we use the word “hope,” sometimes we mean“wishful thinking.”  “I hope my team wins the game.”  “I hope I win the lottery.”  And in these instances, this hope may be a reasonable expectation or not.  One of my grandchildren said last week, “I hope it snows for Christmas.”  She can wish, but living in Northwest Georgia, it’s unlikely to happen.  A farmer plants seeds in the spring and optimistically hopes for a good crop.   My friend can say he hopes Georgia wins the playoff game this weekend.  And based on their record and recent performance, it is certainly much more likely to happen than for Kate to see her snow.  But there is a difference in the way the Bible uses the word.  Biblical hope is not wishful thinking or optimistic thinking. Biblical hope is a confidence that something will happen.  It is not a likelihood, but a sure thing, because it is rooted in the character of God.

The primary Hebrew word translated as “hope” in the Bible is qavah.  This word has a fascinating history.  It is a verb derived from the noun ‘qav’.  A qav is a measuring string.  Today, any craftsman carries a measuring tape, but in Old Testament times and in Jesus’ day, they used a string called a qav.   In Isaiah 44, the prophet is speaking about someone making an idol of wood, and he says, 

Isaiah 44:13   The carpenter stretches a qav; he marks it out with a pencil.

We see this used still today.  If you sew, you may have used a measuring tape.  In Biblical Hebrew, this is a qav.  And the ancient Hebrews made a verb ‘qavah’ out of this noun.  But how do you get hope from a measuring string?   Think about this qav. It won’t give an accurate measurement if it is not stretched out.  The carpenter stretches out the string to measure. The seamstress stretches out the measuring tape.  It must be under tension to be effective.  

So the noun, qav, is a string stretched to tension to measure, and the verb they made out of it, ‘qavah’, is all about the tension produced in the process of waiting in hope.  Hope in the Hebrew sense is all about that tension.  Hope is living in the tension that exists between what is promised and the completion of that promise, between the now and the not yet.  The tension of the time when you know something will happen, and when it does happen.  

Abraham was promised a son, but there was that time of tension when all he had was the promise, and he wondered if he would ever have a son.  Israel was promised a Messiah, but it had to wait over 400 years.  We are promised the return of Jesus, and we live today in the tension of knowing that promise, even as 2000 years have passed and it has not yet been fulfilled.  Again, our hope is not in something that might come true; it is a surety, for God’s promises always come true.

This is the essence of faith, holding onto the promises of God in the time between.  Hope is the tension. Faith is not letting go.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.”

The scripture says faith is the evidence of things that haven’t happened yet.  But if you are the prosecuting attorney, how do you provide evidence of something that is yet to happen?  Faith in God’s trustworthiness, faith in God’s promises, that is the proof of what will happen.  God is always faithful to his promises; He is infallible.  And that is all the evidence we need.  

And it is not ‘blind faith.’  It is not as if our faith in God is just a mental decision to believe something we can’t see.  We don’t just choose to have faith.   Faith is itself evidence-based.  This is the field of apologetics, which covers the evidence for the Bible and Jesus.  If you are interested, I can recommend several good books on this subject.  But the evidence before us is the Bible.  These people who lived and experienced God in their lives present to us the evidence of thousands of years of God’s promises being fulfilled.  The proof is all through this book. And Biblical history is increasingly confirmed each year. 

For years, many historians doubted some of the Bible’s stories, saying that, since they had found no historical proof, they must not be true.  They questioned the existence of a King of Israel named David.  That was completely laid to rest when mention of David was found on a 9th-century stone tablet in 1993.  Historians all agreed that the Hittite empire, often mentioned in the Bible, never existed, as there was no archaeological evidence.  But they had to walk this back and change their books when they found the remains of their large capital city in Turkey.   More and more evidence comes every year.  You can visit museums to see many artifacts that confirm the Bible narrative.  

But we don’t need all of those proofs.   What does Jesus tell Thomas after he shows Thomas his hands and feet? 

John 20:29   “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

“To not see and yet to believe.”  I don’t have to see Jesus’ scars on his hands and feet.  God doesn’t have to perform some sign for me to believe, for he has already done that over and over in the past, in the lives of so many in the Bible and in my life. “To not see and yet to believe” is to live in the tension of that hope in God’s promises that have not come to completion yet, but still believing, not because you can see, but because you have seen enough in the past to know that God is trustworthy.  What you have seen in the past is the basis for your faith.  Where does Paul say faith comes from?

Romans 10:17   So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Paul says, “Faith comes by hearing.”  But remember, Paul is a Jewish Rabbi.  When Paul says ‘hearing’, he has in mind the Hebrew word for hearing, “shema”, which we talked about a few weeks ago.  Shema means hearing and obeying; they cannot be separated.  So Paul is really saying…

Romans 10:17   So then faith cometh by listening and obeying, and this by hearing the word of God.

And Paul is living in a day when God’s message was still primarily transmitted orally.  Very few people had the opportunity to read scripture.  Their primary encounter with God’s word was the spoken word. Now we live in a day when the scriptures are readily available to most people worldwide.  Sadly, some people still only hear the word once a week, even though they have the luxury of reading it every day. God has given us the great gift of his abundant word in many ways. So if Paul were writing this letter today, he might say,

Romans 10:17   So then faith cometh by reading and obeying, and this by reading the word of God.

Here I am talking about the past when everyone else is thinking about the new year approaching.  Are you looking ahead to what this new year will bring?  Many of you will make New Year’s resolutions.  And most who do will quickly break them. I read that fewer than 8% of New Year’s resolutions are kept.  But we like to set goals.  We are told to ask ourselves, “Where would you like to be in 5 years?  How much weight do you want to lose in the coming year?  How much money do you want to put in a savings account by the end of the year?”  We make goals looking to the future.  We are very future-oriented.

It comes from our view of time that we learned from the ancient Greeks.  The Greeks saw time as a river.  People stand somewhere along the bank, and where they stand is the present.  What has already happened is downstream in the past behind you.  The future is upstream, yet to pass by us, but it is already there, headed our way.  If you have this view of time, you will be very confused when you read the Bible, because this is not the way the authors of the Bible thought about time.  Take this verse in Job.

Job 19:25   For I know that my Redeemer lives,  And at the last, he will stand upon the earth.

A great verse.  A very poetic way of saying, “I know the living God who will redeem me.  And in the future, he will come back for me.” But the Hebrew word for the future, the last days, is “אַחֲרוֹן” (acharon), which means “what is behind you.”  For Hebrew thinkers, the future is behind you, which is the opposite of how we think: that the future is ahead of us.

The best way I have seen this explained is by a 20th-century German theologian, H. W. Wolff. Wolff says that the Hebrew concept of time is like a man rowing a boat.2  How many of you have ever rowed a rowboat?  In a conventional rowboat, you sit facing the rear of the boat.   And this is the direction you move.   You can see where you have been, but you can’t see where you are going. So in the Hebrew view of time, you have a full view of the past, but you can’t see the future, for it is all ‘acharon’ behind you.

So how do you maintain a steady course in a rowboat if you can’t see where you are going?  I was taught that you focus on a point straight to the rear of the boat.  As long as you keep that point directly behind the boat, you will travel in a straight line.  So in the Hebrew worldview, you focus on a point in the past to direct your course into the future.

There is much truth here.  We can not see into the future.  We can only see the past.  Perhaps this is why so many New Year’s resolutions fail.  We cannot see what lies ahead, but we plan to reach this goal in an unknown future. We set goals where we can’t see.  They become just wishful thinking.  Perhaps we would do better if we operated using God’s view of time.  

We can see the past.  We have records of the past.  We can see how we have behaved and how God acts. Instead of making goals based on an unknown future, we should, like the man in the rowboat, focus on a point in the past and use that to guide us. Find a worthy example in your Bible or in your own life and set that as your goal for the day.

God has given us many instructions on how to act, and he has, in scripture, given us many examples of men acting correctly and incorrectly, along with the consequences of each.  If we look back to God and focus on Him, we can set a course that leads us to where He wants us to be.

Do you see the significant difference between this Hebrew view of time and the Greek view?  In the Greek view, you are on the banks of the river.  You really have no impact on the river itself.  You are just an observer. Things happen and pass you by, and the future is fixed and coming downstream towards you.  But in the Hebrew view, you are in the water.   Like life, you can see the past but not the future.  And you are not just a passive observer; you are active.  You affect your path.  You choose your direction.

Now, let’s tie this back into hope.  Unfortunately, our English Bible translations often render the Biblical word for hope as ‘wait’ instead, as in this verse in Psalm 27.

Psalms 27:14   Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!

That word ‘wait’ is “qavah,” our word for hope.   And if we translate it as ‘wait for the Lord,’ we get the idea that we sit or stand passively, waiting.  But if that is the case, then why do we need to be strong and take courage?  God is expecting us not just to stand there and wait, but to be active, doing something.

So it is not wait’ but ‘hope’.  And that preposition ‘for’ is the Hebrew ‘el’, which does not mean ‘for’ or ‘in’, but means ‘towards.’  But the translators said that “Hope towards the Lord” or “Wait towards the Lord” is not proper English.  So they made it “wait in the Lord,” “wait for the Lord,” or “wait on the Lord.”  Again, stand there and do nothing while God does everything.

That’s nice, but it is not the correct translation of “el,” and it is not how God typically works. Only a few remarkable times does God instruct people to do nothing while he works (before he parted the sea for the children of Israel to walk through is one of the few exceptions). But God calls people to act.  Abraham, go.  Moses, hold up your staff.  Gideon go into battle.  God wants to partner with us. So I would understand that verse this way:

Psalms 27:14   Hope towards Yehovah; be strong, and let your heart take courage; hope towards Yehovah!

Let’s look at a similar verse:

Psalms 37:34  Wait for the LORD and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land;

Here we see the same beginning, which I would translate as “hope towards Yehovah.” And the psalmist says, ” Don’t just stand there, but keep his way, follow his path, do as he commands.  Hope is a proclamation of our faith in Him that causes us to draw near to Him in obedience. And how does God respond when we hope towards Him?  One more verse in Psalms:

Psalm 40:1   I waited patiently for the LORD; He inclined to me and heard my cry.

“Waited patiently” is a translation of the Hebrew ‘qavah qavahti’, literally “I hope hoped.”  The repetition is for emphasis, so you could say, “I hoped hopefully.”  And how does God respond to our hope?   Remember the qav, the measuring line that must be stretched out to work?  And remember how qavah, the word for hope, is like that stretched-out line?  If we hope towards God, if we are willing to live in faith in the tension of his promises, then God will stretch out towards us.  (“Incline” is from the Hebrew ‘natah’, which is a verb that means “to stretch out, spread out, extend, incline, bend,” We see this in Jesus’ most famous parable, the Prodigal Son.  Do you remember when the wayward son finally came to his senses and decided to go home? 

Luke 15:20 And he arose and came to his father.

And how did his father, who is symbolic of God, respond? 

Luke 15:20  But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

When the child walks in the direction of the father, the father runs in the direction of the son.  This is what God does.  If we can hope towards God, being faithful in obedience to Him, stretching out towards him, then He will stretch out to us.   Skip Moen says, “God never tires of our desire to come to Him. More often than not, we stop moving toward Him. We become believers in the divine rather than pilgrims to the divine.”2

Do you want to experience hope to the Lord?   Are you tired of making New Year’s resolutions that you will soon break?  Then choose the Biblical method.  Don’t make a goal for yourself in the future that you cannot see.   Instead, look to the word of God that you can see.   See how he acts in the past and how he wants us to act.  Let that be the fixed point we focus on.  Choose to follow that path.  This is how the author of Hebrews said this:

Hebrews 12:1-2   And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

Jesus is your fixed point to focus on that you use to set your course.  Look to the example of Jesus to guide your behavior.  “Do this in remembrance of me” is not just about partaking in communion or the Lord’s Supper.   Everything we do should be because we are remembering what Jesus did.

And don’t look at a year ahead.  The only day that we can be obedient is today.  Did he say, “Give us this year our yearly bread”?   His mercies are new every morning.  Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily.”

So do you want to lean into God this year and live in an active hope in the tension of his promises?   Then I ask you to join me.  I will be reading through the Bible, looking back to move forward.  And I am not asking you to commit to reading through the Bible in a year.  I am asking you to read through a portion on January 1.  And on January 2, I ask you to consider reading through a portion that day.  One day at a time.  And if you miss a day, it is past; you can’t go back and live it again.  But you pick up the next day in your obedience. If you are interested, let me know, and I’ll put you on the daily text stream.

Romans 15:13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

  1. January 1 was chosen by the Romans as the beginning of the new year in the calendar popularized by Julias Ceasar (the Julian Calendar), as that was the day the Roman Consuls began their year to align with new leadership and the lunar cycle closest to the solstice. January became the name of the month after the two-faced Roman god, Janus, who looks backward to the past and forward to the future.  A correction to this calendar in 1582 became the calendar we use today, as instituted by Pope Gregory XIII.  The change caused the day following October 4, 1582, to be October 15th, not the fifth.  Of course, God had long ago established his own calendar in Exodus 12, with the month of Aviv in the spring as the first month, and the 10th of that month as the day the Passover lamb was killed.  There is no subsequent passage in the Bible that commands altering the calendar God established. 
  2. Wolff, Hans Walter (1974) “The Concept of Time in the Old Testament,” Concordia Theological Monthly: Vol.45, Article 6.
  3. Moen, Skip. From “The Details” Skipmoen.com August 16, 2009.