Heart and Soul (09/24/26-09/25/26)

One of the challenges of pursuing these studies in the way I do is that each unit can come to be viewed almost in isolation.  It feels sometimes like a complete shift of subject when in fact what is presented in the current passage is a direct continuation of the last passage, and flows from it.  Luke is not presenting us with a collection of short stories, some jumble of vignettes which might share a common theme but don’t otherwise connect one to the other.  This is a narrative history, and seeks to document the development of the church from its first gathering through its full blossoming in the regions of the Roman Empire.  In light of that, it is necessary that we keep the testimony of Peter and John, their trial and release, the threats issued by the Sanhedrin, and the prayerful response of the church in view. 

We don’t know whether the whole church was present to hear Peter’s report upon their release or whether that was a smaller group.  Honestly, and I know I had much the same reaction in chapter 2, when the size of the church population was merely huge, I don’t see how such a group gathered together in any private residence, or even any public residence, if there was such a thing.  I should think it would have been difficult to get everybody together even within the outer courts of the temple.  That’s a lot of people, and even packed in, it would require a lot of space.  And the numbers have been growing between chapter 2 and here.  Yet, what we are presented with is a significantly unified people.  And we are looking in on them, as it were, in the aftermath of that prayer.

It’s not hard to imagine the impact of that moment on those who were present.  You pray for boldness, and for signs and wonders, and the building shakes with the power of God’s response!  Yes, I do believe He heard us!  And the immediate response we were shown was that everybody there at that juncture ‘began to speak the word of God with boldness’ (Ac 4:31).  That is our immediate connection to what is before us now.  Except the picture has expanded somewhat.  Peter and John had gone to ‘their own’ to report (Ac 4:23).  Now, we are looking at ‘the congregation,’ and the term used would indicate, to borrow Thayer’s definition, the whole multitude assembled.  And Luke as likewise drawn back from that specific moment to give us a summary overview of life in the early church.  And the first summation he gives us is this: “Those who believed were of one heart and soul.”

This is not describing a love fest.  This is not merely addressing some emotional high, though no doubt emotions were high, and love quite evident.  Actually, Luke is drawing on biblical imagery in this choice of description.  That may be of his own doing, or it may reflect the fact that for these earliest parts of the history of the Church, he was relying on testimony given by those who were there, by members of the Jewish church, drawn from Jewish life and inclined to Jewish idiom.  We can go back to the chronicles of the kings of Israel, for example, and find something similar.  “The hand of God was on Judah, giving them one heart to do as the king and princes commanded by the word of the LORD” (2Chr 30:12).  Obviously, this is not making a literal declaration, but speaking in figurative terms as to the degree of unity experienced by Judah at that time.  I would full expect that being figurative in nature it is also a tad hyperbolic.  I’m sure that had you been able to canvass the population in that day you would have found some individuals who were not in fact fully onboard with the program.  Yet the general case was one of harmonious unity.  There’s that phrase again, which became so prominent in studying Philippians.

Further, we can bring forth a prophetic word from Ezekiel.  “I will give them one heart, and a new spirit within them.  I will take their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh” (Eze 11:19).  That is a very familiar passage to us, particularly the latter half.  And as the events of that first Pentecost were seen to fulfill the prophecy of Joel, we could likewise construe the scene before us as an evident fulfillment of this prophecy.  I must stress, I suppose, that this being a fulfillment does not preclude further fulfillments.  It seems, particularly as we have been working through the Revelation together in men’s group, that we find it difficult to hold onto that concept.  We want one clear fulfillment, and that’s done with it.  But it doesn’t work that way.  Reading through various commentaries on the Revelation, the case for fulfillments of many aspects having transpired in the course of Rome’s empire, or in the development of the Church through its Holy Roman Empire period and into the Reformation is compelling.  But that does not in any way require us to conclude that what John prophesied has come to pass, or that future events, or even current events, might just as fully come to align with the prophetic message.

But let me stick with our passage.  It has enough and more to contemplate.  God, through Ezekiel, spoke of a people given one heart.  Luke speaks of this stage of the Church as finding the whole congregation to be of one heart.  Ezekiel speaks of a new spirit set within the people.  Luke presents us with a people so united as to be of one soul.  Again, this is quite obviously figurative language.  They did not share one beating organ between them, nor was it the case that they were literally a single living being.  They remained a group of individuals, presumably with individual homes to go to at the end of the say, yet such was their unity that they were as one living body together, with one shared core of emotion, will, and purpose, one vital essence, the new life instilled in them by Christ through the Holy Spirit; the same Holy Spirit who had filled them in answer to that prayer.  Simple point being made, then:  The Holy Spirit who had filled them in that moment, continued to fill them.  The Holy Spirit abides.  He has taken up residence in His Church, in the temple of lives transformed.

You know, in preparing my notes for this study, I found it to be one of those rare cases where matters of doctrine are difficult to perceive, neither law nor gospel in clear display.  Yet, there is more here of doctrine than I had noticed.  There’s the one fairly obvious point regarding Jesus as resurrected, which is a shockingly central matter to early preaching, as I suppose it was a shocking reality for the Apostles to have experienced.  But we can add this evidence of the Holy Spirit no longer dropping by for brief visits, but rather abiding.  And we can add as well the evidence that His abiding presence isn’t for a select few in the church, but for each and every believer.  As has been taught by better men than I, to speak of one as a Spirit-filled Christian is to present a bit of a tautology.  There can be no Christian who is not Spirit-filled, and there can be no Spirit-filled who is not a Christian.  I’m sure you could find those who claim one or the other but do so falsely.  That’s a different matter altogether.  But as concerns those who believe, it is ever and always both.

I was reminded in yesterday’s Table Talk of the statement that he who has the Son has the Father also, and he who denies the Son denies the Father as well (1Jn 2:23).  We can extend that same concept to encompass the Holy Spirit. He who has the Son has the Spirit, and he who denies the Son has not the Spirit.  That, I would note, accords well with John’s test for spirits, which I must say, is as much a test for the one who claims to speak from the Spirit as it is for the spirit itself.

But back to our passage.  They were of one heart.  The heart in this realm of figurative imagery speaks of that which makes a person who he is. To put it in the vernacular, that which is at heart is that which makes a person tick.  It expresses something of a combined image of emotions and will, and these are quite naturally so firmly connected as to be inseparable.  So, thought comes into it as well.  We are used to associating thought with mind, and leaving emotions for the heart, but Jewish thought would not have done so, at least not with any clear cut boundary.  Thoughts and emotions naturally entangle to form will and purpose, and the whole of this becomes the heart of the man, what makes him tick.  Here, we are presented with a unity of heart, a unity of thought, emotion, will, purpose.  All were in agreement as to how things should be, and all were in agreement in being determined to live accordingly.

And then we get the added note of one soul.  It’s hard for me to read this without being drawn to replay the old standard, “Body and Soul,” in my mind.  “I’m all for you, body and soul.”  There’s something of that at play in this description, though without the sensual overtones.  And at some level, that’s actually quite an apt expression of the love we have for our beloved Savior.  It should be, at least.  It’s not that we are in pursuit of a date with Him, or thinking in anything like those terms.  But the depths of devotion expressed in that line are absolutely fitting for one who would declare himself a servant of Christ, and all the more for one who accounts himself part of the bride of Christ.

Now, consider that phrase, ‘part of the bride.’  This reflects something Paul emphasizes often in his writing.  It is one of his favorite metaphors for the church; the body of Christ.  And in that metaphor, the individuals are as various limbs and organs.  His point is consistently to demonstrate that while we each have our individual contributions to make to the full function of the Church, we remain one body, with one Head.  There, I suppose, you discover somewhat of his background, having grown up in the college town of Tarsus.  There’s a bit of Greek thinking in that the head has become the more central locus for reason, will, and direction; and that accords far better with our own sense of things.  But it’s making the same point.  They were as one.  The Church ought ever to be as one.  And that, given one Lord and Savior, ought to apply whether we are contemplating the local body of a single congregation, or the Church Universal.

I would have to argue, I think, that at least as concerns ‘those who believe,’ (as opposed to those who merely recite memorized dogma), it does apply.  Yet I would also have to recognize that this unity of heart and soul is imperfect.  We are not agreed on every point of doctrine.  We may not be agreed on what’s appropriate as liturgy.  We may not agree on what things take prominence in the programs of our various churches.  Heck, we may not even agree with those things in our own local church.  The question that must be asked is, does this boil over into disunity?  Is the heart of the Church still the thing that makes me tick?

There are times when that becomes a very difficult, painful question.  In some ways, I know I am in the midst of just such a time currently, and it calls for a great deal of prayer and introspection.  There are things happening which bother me, but I am at a loss to discern clearly whether the issue is with corporate direction or with myself.  I am likely to discover that it’s a bit of both.  It usually is in these places of conflict and concern.  But here’s what hurts in the whole process.  In reading the EDBT article on the heart, there was a point that jumped out, and that is that where things are spoken of as being matters of heart, there is always this sense of whole-person involvement.

Whole-person involvement:  All in.  Certainly, that ought to be our response to the incredible give we have received from our Savior.  You have taken my heart of stone and given me a heart of flesh!  You have taken upon Yourself the penalty for all my sins, even those I have yet to commit!  You died that I might live, and You have willingly, gladly, given me life in spite of who I have been and who I yet am.  You have demonstrated Yourself all-powerful and wholly loving.  You have shown compassion on whom You will, and have willed that I would be in that number.  How can I possibly respond to that in any sufficiency, except to say, “I am all for You, body and soul.”  You direct and I shall go.  You command and I shall speak.

That’s all as it ought to be.  And yet, it is so often not how it is, if I’m honest.  There are times, yes.  There are other times when I am as stubborn as a mule, unwilling to budge regardless the pain of the goads.  But I am a dumb mule, it seems, and can’t always tell which thing it is that I am doing.  I know that I am having a rather visceral reaction to certain aspects of the present course of things at our church.  It is not enough to push me to depart.  It’s not a matter of false doctrine or anything of that nature.  But something feels cheapened to me, and I fear lest we become, like the church in Sardis, all appearance but lacking in realities (Rev 3:1).  Yet, perhaps it is the case that what’s happening is in fact a correction of that very thing.  I don’t know as I buy that, though to be sure there are doubtless those of pretense and pretension among us.  And who knows?  I can be pretentious enough myself on my poorer days.  But God will do as He will, and I pray that I shall be in line with my own prayer, and willingly pursue what He gives me to do.  I pray as well that this church as a group may indeed come to the place described by these words, one in heart and soul, a community of individuals gathered together with a sense of whole-person involvement in the harmoniously unified pursuit of declaring the Word of the Lord, the glorious good news of our crucified and resurrected Savior who lives and reigns forevermore.

Remember, now, that prayer which they had been praying.  It was a prayer for boldness in proclaiming God’s word, and it was also a prayer for His own accompanying witness to their truth by healings, and by signs and wonders.  In the immediate fulfillment of that, the signs and wonders are seemingly absent.  Yes, all began to speak the gospel with confidence, and this was most assuredly evidence of the Spirit at work within all of them, but it wasn’t the sort of thing they had in mind, was it?  I want to add yet another sign and wonder to the fulfillment here; that this group, so freshly come together and still rapidly growing, drawn from a widely varied background, should experience such a profound unity of mind and purpose is nothing short of miraculous.  That unity itself was God’s clear testimony to their faith, and it was testified through a vibrant and lived out faith, not only in evangelistic pursuits, but in their life together.  This was in itself an incredible development.

I would have to recognize, of course, that there were other groups gathered in Israel.  There were the Essenes, for example, who showed a great deal of unity, it would seem.  They, too, shared all.  They, too, devoted themselves to the form of belief they had adopted and how they saw it applying to their way of life.  So, perhaps miraculous doesn’t quite fit the situation.  Perhaps I make too much of what is on display here.  But then, I don’t know that the Essenes had experienced so great and so rapid a rate of growth in their numbers.  It seems more like they attracted those of similar temperament and perhaps grew more slowly, more or less selecting for likemindedness.

Still, it seems to me quite significant that twice now, Luke has observed of this early church how single they were in thought and deed.  The depth of their fellowship goes beyond the ordinary.  And yet, if we follow the thread of Apostolic teaching through the epistles, it seems to me we find that this was in fact the ordinary condition of the Church.  Repeatedly, we encounter commendations of the love shown by the brethren in this locale or that, and not only for those of their own local church, but for such believers as may be passing through, whether missionaries or just fellow Christians going about their business.  We see it expressed, as well, in the sending of support for their brethren in other places.  Twice in the history traced by this book we find the churches sending financial support to their brethren in Jerusalem.  Coming from Antioch, we might expect some degree of familiarity with those back in the city.  But that later gift of support gathered from the people of Macedonia and Achaia came from such as would have no connection whatsoever with the Jerusalem congregation.  And still, they gave, and gave gladly.

There is something in this that we ought to take to heart for our own faith and practice.  I don’t suggest that we fall in with the thinking that Jesus promoted a form of Communism, or at the very least communalism.  That wasn’t the point.  And I might well maintain that the example of the Jerusalem church attempting this lifestyle demonstrates the fact that such an approach is unsustainable.  But that’s another matter for us to consider later, I think.  And it’s a matter which must be approached prayerfully, lest we find our political opinions informing our faith rather than allowing faith to inform our political opinions.

The central feature of what Luke is showing us here is that matter of unity.  Let us call it a vibrant unity.  And we must further recognize that he is showing us this profound and lively unity as a witness of God moving among them.  It is not an organizational matter.  It is not presented as indicating that every church in every place and age ought to be established on this model.  It is an appreciation of the historical realities of this first community of believers.  To what degree it should be accounted unique to their situation and make up, I don’t know as I could reliably say.  But I do observe that we don’t find this point repeated as the Church expands outward into Judea, Samaria, and all the world.  I don’t recall reading any such declaration in regard to any of the churches planted in Asia, Macedonia, or Achaia.  They had their own profound impacts as God worked upon them.  But each, it seems, followed a slightly different trajectory, developed a form of their own.

So, let me conclude this.  Unity of heart and soul, of desire and purpose as regards our great and glorious God and Savior ought ever to define each and every local body of the Church.  It ought also to define our interactions with other local bodies.  This unity, I must observe, does not demand lockstep thinking in all matters of doctrine.  There is, obviously, a body of core beliefs upon which we must be agreed, else be found false in our profession of faith.  There are false teachings against which we ought to be on guard and prepared to counter the falsehoods with Truth.  But there is much upon which we can agree to differ without finding one another deficient in faith.  I recall looking at the founding catechisms of the three main branches of the Reformation churches and being somewhat surprised at the degree to which they sought to demonstrate their unity.  Look across the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Congregationalists at their founding, and their catechisms are quite nearly word for word on most points.  Indeed, if I’m not mistaken, the Baptists and Congregationalists worked from the Westminster Catechism as their starting point, and took pains to demonstrate agreement on most every point.  The Baptists, of course, took a different view on baptism, and both Baptists and Congregationalists viewed the governance of the Church differently, but neither of these were matters of central importance for doctrinal truth.  They did not look upon their brethren from the other branches and account them heretics, but rather, beloved brothers in Christ.

Obviously, there are limits to this, and many a church around us is only nominally a church, their teachings and claims removed so far from Scripture as to deny Christ entirely.  With these, no, there can be no common faith, though we ought not to condemn, but rather to lovingly seek to correct.  But with those who accept the Apostolic teaching, the word of truth once for all delivered to the saints, who continue to proclaim a crucified and resurrected Christ, the Son of the Living God, fully God and fully Man; who yet hold to the truth that in Him and Him only may we be saved, and that He is indeed Lord over all creation, born of a virgin, died for our sins, raised for our justification?  Yes, these are our brothers, our sisters, whatever differences of opinion we may have on less definitively certain matters of biblical teaching.  We can and should recognize where there is good faith argument for opinions with which we differ.  And we can and should acknowledge that it’s just as possible that we have got it wrong as that they do. 

All this to say, let us prefer and proffer unity where unity can be had without compromise of the Gospel.  Let God’s glory shine through our love for one another, our welcome embrace of all who come in the name of the Lord, however they may differ from us in background, in social state, in learning, or even in practice.  God has seen fit to accept us all.  Surely we ought to do likewise.

Evident God (09/26/26)

I want to emphasize the point that this is not primarily about this group of believers in Jerusalem.  Neither is it primarily about the Apostles.  This continues to be about God answering the prayer they had prayed.  It’s about God.  They asked that He would show Himself through their actions.  Yes, they were thinking signs and wonders, grand displays of power to confirm their words.  The thing is, it’s often not the grand displays that testify most to God, but the powerful sign of changed lives.  What I am saying is simply that God chooses to be most evident in His people.  We are the testimony.  That they had taken to being so selfless towards one another, seeing their wealth not as a thing to be carefully preserved for their own comfort, but rather as a means to help those who had less; this was as great a testimony to God being with them as anything they were going to proclaim in words.

I mention the adage often in these studies.  “Actions speak louder than words.”  Indeed, actions so often belie our words, and that, as James would say, ought not to be.  There is that definition of truth that I often come back to as well:  Truth is found when outward appearance conforms fully with inward state.  That is on display here.  The way they lived life together demonstrated the reality of God’s work of change within.  There are two things (at least) to notice about this change, this lifestyle.  The first I shall consider here, and that is the fact that the capacity to live in such harmonious unity, while it assuredly takes work on the part of those involved, does not and cannot happen apart from God being at work within each individual.  That is what makes it so powerful a sign.  Anybody can look at this group and recognize that here is something unusual.  Here is something that doesn’t occur in nature.  This people, though they hardly know one another, though they come from different life situations, different countries, even, has such care for one another that not one of them lacks what he needs to live.

There are no homeless in the house of God.  But hear this, and hear it well:  This is God’s doing.  This is God making Himself evident in and through His people.  Why?  Because that’s how He chooses to do things.  Another point I make fairly often:  God doesn’t need our help.  If anything, our help is more a hindrance, a pleasing contribution, and looked on kindly, yet really something He has to work around more than any real assistance.  We are, in short, about as helpful as a six year old ‘helping’ Dad in the garage or the shop.  But God is pleased to have us with Him in the work, to show Himself through us.  He chooses this.  Let me shift emphasis.  He chooses this.  That may raise the hackles of some, because we like to see ourselves as in charge.  If we aren’t acting by free will alone, then we are reduced to robots, as the thinking goes.  But we are acting by free will in this.  It’s simply that there would nothing for that will to choose except God had chosen thus to act.  Perhaps we can try it this way:  He chooses to give us a choice, and we, seeing the goodness of that choice, could hardly conceive of choosing otherwise. 

However you slice it, withal God is Sovereign, even as this same gathered people had firmly asserted in their prayers.  Never lose sight of this.  To lose sight of His sovereignty is to begin the slide into treating Him like an idol, like a genie.  Oh, I pray to Him and He must give me what I want.  See?  Says so right there in Scripture.  All I have to do is append, “in Jesus’ name,” and He’s bound by His own promise.  He has to do as I ask.  Far be it from us to think like that!  No, appeal to His name is appeal to His authorization.  It is a claim to acting on His behalf, on His orders.  It has the same force as we find when the Decalogue tells us not to take His name in vain.  Indeed, it could be argued that in seeking to bend Him to our desires by tacking His name onto our prayers, we are in fact using His name in vain.  We are claiming His authorization where He has authorized nothing of the sort.  Be mindful of your prayers.  Be mindful of your sovereign God.  Be mindful that He is Truth and Love and Life; all these simultaneously and essentially.  They define Him.  From our perspective, it is probably more useful to observe that He defines them.  Truth isn’t what we choose to believe.  It is bedrock reality.  Love isn’t the gauzy stuff of Hallmark movies, nor the lust-filled desires of advertising and film.  Love is compassion, real caring for real people, selflessly giving of oneself into the needs of another.  And of course, in its highest form, such love gives itself even when the receiver of that love is resistant and resentful towards the giving.  Life is not, finally, about this limited span we enjoy on earth.  It’s not a matter of being fed, clothed, sheltered and healthy.  Life, at least so far as the present order is concerned, consists far more in the inward man than in outward condition.  The poor man who has God and knows it is living far better than the rich man who denies God.  To go back to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, we see that it is not a matter of one’s status in this life, but rather of being known by God and accounted His child.  It is a question of how we shall spend eternity.  Shall we spend it in His presence, or permanently banned from His presence?  Shall we dwell in the Light, or shall we persist in darkness?  Those are the things that matter.

Luke has now shown us two summations of the transformation happening amongst those gathering in Jerusalem; those being gathered.  For again, God is sovereignly calling whom He will.  Nobody forces their way into salvation, demanding entrance into His family whether He likes it or not.  To what court would one make such an appeal?  Who would enforce its decisions?

That Luke finds it to his purpose to twice speak to us about how these new converts were living, how unified they were, how they were selling off properties to support the body that had gathered, suggests that this was significant.  Certainly, he was impressed by it.  And just as certainly, his sources for these earliest days of the Church were equally impressed by it.  I would expect it was perhaps one of the Apostles who had supplied these details, perhaps Philip the Evangelist, with whom Luke and Paul had spent some time.  Certainly, if I were one of the twelve, or of the 120 remaining after Jesus was crucified, the response I was seeing, and the way things were going would be making a strong impression on me.  Who could imagine?  They, more than anybody, would recognize just how unlikely any such outcome was.  They were probably just as surprised by developments as were the Sanhedrin.  The difference is that they welcomed what the Sanhedrin sought to oppose.

So, yes, there is something highly significant in that these folks were not just responding with a momentary enthusiasm.  I used to see that a lot in my last church.  There would be an altar call, and some stranger brought in to experience a church service would be so moved by the pleas as to come forward and ‘give his life to Jesus.’  Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn’t.  But it was an emotional response, and in many cases, it proved the case that emotions faded about as quickly as the service ended.  Oh, we would all rejoice to see another sinner saved.  But come back a week from now, or a month, and whatever happened to so-and-so?

With that in mind, I find it somewhat telling that where that first summation back in chapter 2, comes with the excitement of visual, sensory evidence of the Holy Spirit poured out, and with the wondrous evidence of His working in them as they suddenly found themselves able to speak in languages not known to them at the time, this time it’s different.  This time it’s a quieter affair.  Yes, there is that moment of shaking as God responds.  There is that instant answering assurance that their prayers are heard and He is pleased to answer.  But the answer isn’t in the sorts of signs and wonders they had in mind.  It’s primarily focused on the backbone for which they prayed, the courage to speak the truth in love despite the threatenings of the Sanhedrin.

Now, we are seeing a secondary display of signs and wonders in that they were living as they did, wholly committed.  They were taking to heart the example of John the Baptist, perhaps.  “I must decrease and He must increase” (Jn 3:30).  At least so far as concerns those whom Luke is commending to our attention here, not a one thought to make anything of himself.  It wasn’t about making a name for oneself.  It wasn’t vying for position, or seeking to be more favorably approved than others.  The thought keeps coming back to me, compare and contrast with what we find happening in Corinth. They had all these signs and wonders going on, but they had lost the thread, and Paul had to come with stern rebuke, with remedial education to remind them what mattered.  It’s pretty much the exact counter-example to what Luke presents us with here, and I have to wonder, given that he was familiar with Corinth and with Paul’s correction, if it isn’t that aspect which so impressed him that he felt it necessary to make note of it.

Here is what real revival looks like!  That seems to be the point.  Real revival isn’t something we work up by careful orchestration.  It’s all well and good that we seek to set out an atmosphere of worship in our services.  It’s fine, I suppose, that we seek to coordinate our song choices to support the preaching, though I don’t think that’s entirely necessary, personally.  Yes, the preaching of the Word is paramount.  But I do find myself sometimes wishing that we would leave the orchestration to God, and allow Him to move more freely in our midst.  But it is what it is, I suppose, and until He chooses to make it otherwise, so it shall continue to be.

Anyway, here is real revival.  Here is the clearest evidence that God is doing something, because it’s not some momentary excitement.  It’s a matter of changed lives.  What Luke is showing us is not some requirement placed upon each and every congregation to form for all time.  It is simply a record of what was happening here in this time and place, with these people.  It is a response of wonder, that such a display of transformed hearts was present in the work.  And it’s those transformed hearts that are the important bit.  “They were of one heart and soul.”  Amazing!  As we shall see in the next passage, this was not 100% participation in unity.  Not everybody in that congregation was truly redeemed.  And the same can be said of our own congregations.  When we speak of all, it is rarely all, but rather a generalization.  All so often simply means most.  All were agreed might just mean that those who didn’t agree kept it to themselves.

But when it lasts?  When it becomes lifestyle rather than just something that happens on Sunday mornings?  This is revival.  This is God actively at work in the lives of His children.  This is a true sign and wonder.  And that they would seem to have recognized it as such is, I would say, evidence of maturing faith in them.  They weren’t hungering after signs.  They were hungering after effectiveness.  They’re not showing off.  They’re seeking to more fully serve their Lord in accordance with His desires.

They want to be evident in their faith.  They are evident in their faith.  And in that they are granted evidence that their faith is real, that they have come to a true understanding of the God Who Is.  They have set aside the empty ritual in favor of a lively, lived faith.  I don’t wish to minimize the faithfulness of many among the Jews.  After all, this gathering is a gathering of Jews.  And we may reasonably assume that they were as genuine in their desire to live godly prior to receiving Christ, though it may be that many were outright scoundrels, I suppose.  We certainly find ourselves faced with a mixed contingent in our own ranks, as concerns former ways.  But while Judaic practices certainly had impact on how one lived and pursued their livelihoods, so much of it was a matter of scheduled actions.  It’s the Sabbath, and we must not do anything.  It’s 3PM and we must go to prayer.  It’s not a lot different from what one finds the Muslim doing, really.  There are scheduled hours, and if I would be found acceptable to Allah, I must drop what I’m doing, get on my prayer mat, facing the right direction, and pray.  It’s all I must, and little to nothing of I desire.

Comes the Holy Spirit, transforming our heart of stone to a heart of flesh, and there comes a realization of the true extent of God’s love towards us.  I am redeemed!  Not, I hope to be if I can only maintain a reasonable balance of good deeds to counter my bad ones.  I am His!  Not, I wish to be found tolerable by Him.  I am His child.  He adopted me!  This changes everything.  The life of Christian faith is not a matter of compliance.  It’s not a matter of reviewing our checklist and making sure we did everything just so.  It’s a matter of gratitude.  Don’t miss this!  “And abundant grace was upon them all.”  That is the precursor to this generosity and compassion that Luke is chronicling for us.  God moved.  God made Himself known in His compassionate goodness, in His eternal lovingkindness.  He said to His children, “This is Who I AM,” and His children said, “That’s how I want to be, too.”

This takes me to the second aspect of this selflessness that I feel needs to be emphasized.  I’ll explore it more in the next section of the study, but I’ll touch on it here.  This was not compelled compassion.  In honest use of language, there can be no such thing as compelled compassion.  If it is compelled, compassion has left the building.  God loves a cheerful giver (2Co 9:7).  He’s not looking for those who act under compulsion, giving grudgingly if at all.  But He does prepare these good deeds in advance for us, in order that we might do them (Eph 2:10).  He doesn’t force us to act.  He makes opportunity for us to act, in order that we might know the joy of being found useful to Him.

So, what Luke is setting before us here is not some sort of demand for communal life in the Church.  He is setting before us the natural response of transformed hearts.  He is laying out evidence of a real and powerful move of God, a real revival.  Rather than trying to make it some sort of rule of life for our congregation, akin to those monks who take up a vow of poverty as a requirement of their monkhood, we ought to see in it a measuring stick of sorts; a way of discerning true revival from manufactured revivalism.

You know, John calls us to test the spirits to discern of they are of God or not.  This seems to me to fall into the same category.  Is this real, or is this something being worked up?  Is this transformation or show?  When the work of God amongst a people is real, I do believe it shall follow that there is a real sense of community amongst those who have believed, that they do share life on a profound level.  It may not consist in selling off spare properties so as to support those among us in need.  But then again, it may.  That is, frankly, up to the one with property.  More truly, it’s up to God, who is assuredly able to so move upon the transformed heart of such a one to do with that property as God would have him to do.  It may be time to sell and make those proceeds available to the body.  It may be time to utilize that property in some fashion to support the work of the gospel, perhaps as a retreat of sorts, perhaps as offering shelter to visiting brethren.  It may not be time to do anything in particular with it.  Perhaps it is a season to enjoy that with which God has blessed you.  But hold it lightly.  And should He call you to let it go, then do so.  But it is as God leads, not as peer pressure insists.  Let it be the natural response of your transformed heart, or leave it alone.

Whatever the case, the core principle would seem to be this:  The vertical love that unites us to God as His children ought to fully intersect our horizontal love for one another.  There is yet another image of the Cross, perhaps the most significant image of the Cross:  Here is love.  My love for God is reflecting His love for you, and it does so through my love for you.  I fear my words are falling short here.  But let me simply say this.  Love for God cannot happen in isolation.  It cannot exist apart from love for His children, our brethren.  Neither can love for our fellow man persist in any meaningful fashion apart from a real, transformative love for God.  Yes, atheists can be generous.  Yes, they can know real concern for the plight of their fellow man.  But they cannot love on this level, not in the full, essential, selfless compassion of agape.  That needs God.

Lord, I feel it needful to pray for a restored sense of this unity.  It’s a difficult season I find myself in, and it pains me.  Yes, there’s the difficulty of helping my beloved wife through her health issues.  That’s one thing.  There’s also the abiding difficulty of her withdrawal from this congregation in which I yet feel to be my family, appointed by You.  But now, there are these added trials of change within that family, change with which I am finding it impossible to be fully onboard.  Forgive me if I am in fact resisting what You are seeking to do.  But it feels too manufactured, too much a veneer being glued on.  Is there a real core?  Is this real?  That is the thing that troubles me.  I feel more and more isolated even as I participate, and that is likely as not a false feeling.  But I need Your work in me, my Savior, if I am to come once more into a sense of unity here.  I will confess as well a bit of disappointment that I cannot participate in the Africa mission this year.  But I am no less certain that I have taken the course You would have me to take in regard to that trip.  Still, there are those I would love to see again, and there is the joy of being useful in Your service.  I have, I feel, grown so much by those prior trips.  Though, I would also have to confess there is the ever present challenge of keeping away from any sort of self-promotion.  Still, I would love to be active in that work again, should You find it to Your purpose that it be so.  Only, if You would, let it be that my bride would be found in support of it, rather than in dread of it.  I don’t know.  Sounds like asking for impossibilities to me.  But then, nothing is impossible to You.  So, I’ll ask one more:  let it be that she and I might be restored to a greater unity of faith and belief.  Let her come back to the church, and be drawn out of these various odd teachings that have so laid hold of her.  I know that she is Your child, every bit as much as I am.  But I know concern for the things she pursues.  What can I say to this?  Thy will be done, Lord.  Change what needs changing, bolster what needs bolstering.  I lay myself before You.  Do as You will.

Evident Life (09/27/26)

I will continue to press the point that what is on display in this passage is the answering of their prayer according to God’s design.  They wanted signs to confirm their faith and their claims in regard to Him.  In response, He was making them a sign in their own right.  They were as one, sharing a fellowship akin to a familial relationship, even though their numbers were large and growing.  It strikes me that even the idea of familial relationship has become strained in our modern world, even as applied to physical family units.  I think of this recent trial of a mother not so far from here who had calmly gone about the actions of strangling her own three children.  That is chilling enough.  But to see a jury conclude that somehow this was excusable, sort of okay, and something any mother had likely contemplated doing?  This is a marker on the highway of modern dissolution.  It’s of a piece with the sundry implementations of assisted suicide agencies as part of nationalized health provision.  Or toss in the decision that abortion should be legal up to the moment of birth and probably beyond.  Life doesn’t matter.  Family connections are matters of convenience at best, to be sundered the moment anything becomes uncomfortable or disagreeable.  We don’t like how you voted?  We dissolve our family ties with you.

I wish I could say I was immune to these influences, but an honest reckoning would indicate not.  Our lines may be religious rather than political, but I’m not convinced that’s any more valid.  Mind you, we do have that marker laid down by Christ.  “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.  He who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Mt 10:37).  And one might well ask how this comports with the commandment to honor your father and mother (Ex 20:12), for it must.  Truth cannot be one thing here and another, contrary thing there.  And God is Truth, and Jesus is God.  This equation must hold.  The key, perhaps, lies in a distinction between honor and love.  Let’s test that.

Honor translates kabad, to be heavy, weighty.  That can take on negative connotations as indicating something burdensome.  But it also takes on the positive sense of that which is honorable.  Honor is a weighty matter.  To honor is to esteem and respect, suggesting at least that the one thus honored is deemed to be honest and upright.  As to love, we are dealing with phileo in this passage, friendly affection and delight, a longing for the company of the one thus loved.  Agape would indicate a love close-coupled with veneration, with honor.  But this is more a matter of emotions.  That said, it seems most of the lexicons make the point that these two forms of love are effectively synonymous as used in the NT.  So, really, not a lot of help there, is there?  We are to hold our parents in esteem, with perhaps the assumption of upright and honest behavior being exemplified by them.  Yet our love for God must supersede even that, and why?  Because in the end He is our Father and hopefully theirs as well.

This, then, comes down to our adoption into the family of God.  We are His children by His choice, and as such, the call to honor our father applies first and foremost to our relationship with Him.  The commandment still holds, as regards our fleshly parents, but with this caveat:  If they should incline to instruct us or direct us in ways contrary to God’s clear law, then His commandment must come first.  If love for parent can only persist by diminishing love for God, then it must be reduced if not relinquished.  It must become conditional, I suppose.  Likewise the love of the parent for their child.  And that, I should think, at least for my generation and earlier, is an even more difficult thing to contemplate than rejecting one’s parents.  Yet that has ever been the command of Scripture.  The child who rebels against God is to be cut off.  We don’t like to hear that.  And honestly, I think we are called to be as charitable as is humanly possible in applying this, ever holding to the hope that they may yet come to faith.  We, after all, were not believers from birth.  For my part, a fair portion of my life had already gone by before ever I acknowledged my Lord and Savior.  And for most if not all of us, the challenge of truly honoring Him as Lord, giving Him full right and reign over our ways, remains a difficult challenge.  That, I should think, speaks as much to His patience and mercy as to our sinfulness and obstinacy.

But I seem to have yet again gone off on a tangent.  Let me try and bring this back on course.  In a world busily dissolving all sense of family, we have been entered into a family whose ties go beyond those of the flesh.  Rightly experienced, they go beyond the bounds of time and space.  I have brothers and sisters known to me in Africa now, a few of whom I remain in contact with, on however limited a basis.  But with or without that communication, the reality of connection remains.  I have this local church family of which I am a part.  And it is a family.  I would have to confess that there are times when it feels more so and times when it feels less the case, but whatever the feelings, the reality is unchanged.  This is family.  And that is the fundamental picture being given us here.

It shocks us a bit to read how ‘not one claimed that anything belonging to him was his own.’  What is this?  Some have read it and concluded that Christianity was intended to implement a communist lifestyle.  Jesus was a Commie!  No.  That’s not the point.  Christianity was a family.  It still is.  That’s the point.  Let me draw one fundamental distinction.  Those selling their property so as to provide support for their newfound brothers were doing so of their own will.  They were not commanded to sell, required to divest themselves of any excess properties they might have.  The Apostles were not insisting on this.  So far as we know, they weren’t even preaching about anything in regard to finances and what we might construe as stewardship.  It seems, from what we are seeing, that their great focus was on Christ resurrected, with its necessary precursor, Christ crucified.  Of course, at this juncture, Christ crucified was known fact to one and all.  We’re still mere months removed from the event and in the city where it happened.  What needed repeating was that the crucifixion didn’t stick.  The grave did not in the end claim Him, but God resurrected Him Who is Himself God.  I don’t know as they were yet too concerned with sorting out how He could be both God and Man.  There would be time for that debate later.  At this point the critical message of the Gospel was simply this:  He lives!  And because He lives, we live.

And it was that recognition which empowered this outsized generosity in those come to faith.  He lives, and because of Him, we now live.  They have discovered how fully God loves them, and as such are coming to fully love Him.  They have found the One in Whom they can truly trust, for He is faithful.  If He is faithful, then to obey His promptings, even to the point of selling house and home, will not leave us destitute.  Another verse remains true and shall to the end.  “I have been young, and now I am old.  Still, I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken, or his descendants begging for bread” (Ps 37:25).  God provides.  He provides, as James tells us, every good and perfect gift (Jas 1:17).  Our Father knows our needs even before we think to ask (Mt 6:8).  And so, in giving His disciples a model for prayer, Jesus left it at this.  “Give us this day our daily bread” (Mt 6:11).  Like the manna in the desert, there was no reason to horde, to have a cache in reserve against future need.  God provides.

This becomes more difficult for us to believe, I think, given our lifelong pursuit of retirement security.  We are trained to pursue wealth.  We are bombarded with advertisements for things we could have, and it stirs in us an urge to increase our income so that we can afford whatever earthly delights have caught our eye.  We in the church can hardly be found immune, can we?  I feel those urges build on occasion, almost like I’m casting about for something to buy simply because the funds are there, and one hates to see it go to waste.  Stupid?  Yes.  Fleshly?  Yes.  But undeniably real.  Perhaps our brethren in more difficult circumstances have the advantage of us here.  I don’t doubt but that they know their own longings after material goods.  Indeed, I know for a fact that they deal with it.  But they also know how to be content with nigh to nothing.  I’ve seen it.  I still can’t fathom how they survive it.  But they do.  By the grace of God they do.  And I dare say they are quite fully aware that it is by God’s grace alone.

So, as we are presented with this extravagant sense of charitableness, of family, amongst the believers gathered in Jerusalem, we should be amazed.  But we should not suppose it a matter of law.  It is not imposed charity.  Charity cannot be imposed.  The moment is is imposed it is no longer charity.  It is taxation.  Even if it is no government agency making the imposition, it remains taxation.  If our giving at church is a matter of dictated duty – you must tithe, and if you don’t, you’ll be hearing from us – then it is a worthless thing in the sight of God.  Arguably, any church that would behave thus is worthless in the sight of God.  And I’m not saying that I know of any such church, with possible exception for certain televangelists.  But then, I have difficulty accounting their like a church in the first place.

The fundamental here is that real love for God will necessarily demonstrate in real love for God’s children.  The heart that truly knows its experience of God’s grace must surely be moved to express its gratitude.  And the best expression of gratitude is in obedience to His example.  This is who my Father is, and I seek to be like Him.  There, going back to our diversion, is the root of honor.  I honor my Father because He is honorable.  I see who He is, and I want nothing so much as to be like Him.  It’s not a lusting after His power.  It’s a recognition of His worth, a desire to honor Him by our likemindedness.  That is what Luke has put on display:  A people so deeply in love with the God who loves them as to practically be casting about for opportunities to love as He loves.

It comes to this.  If faith is real it will be evident.  And the primary evidence of faith is love.  Love, if it is real, takes action.  Love sees the need and seeing that it has the capacity to supply the need does so.  This is the full development of that unity of heart and soul which they were experiencing as those now filled by one Spirit.  They were being knit together as if one being.  Here is the root of Paul’s body analogy.  Yes, there were matters of will and purpose.  But there were also matters of mutual care.  If one was hurting, all felt the pain of it.  If one was honored, all felt the joy of it.  But it’s not a matter of politics.  It’s not a matter of societal modeling.  It is an outpouring of inward change.  “They shared everything they had,” as the NLT finishes the verse.

It’s something of the same sentiment we find celebrated in ‘The Three Musketeers’.  “All for one and one for all.”  This has ever been an ideal for human endeavor, I suppose, at least in Western thought.  It is the ideal held before us by Christ.  But we might capitalize the One.  Our God is One; One for all.  And we all are for our One God.  Everything else becomes less than secondary in comparison.  He has us in hand, and knowing that, we let go of every other thing we thought necessary to cling to.

The question must arise.  What am I clinging to?  What do I look to for my security?  What am I holding onto with a grip stronger than is healthy or wise?  I know, as I contemplate a nearing retirement, that matters of finance loom larger.  It’s easy to be free with money when you see a steady income that is more than sufficient.  It’s easy to be generous when you have clear expectation that the coffers will soon be refilled.  But seeing that spigot about to shut off?  What becomes of generosity then?

What of various family relationships?  I have had cause to consider what happens should my beloved wife pass.  It has felt nearer than is comfortable in recent months, though that may be shifting.  It’s hard to tell, for I can only see what she chooses to show.  But it’s been a question of another sort for years now.  When her feelings come into conflict with what I perceive to be God’s directing of my efforts, what to do?  Last year, it was quite clear that however much it pained her, my participation in the teaching mission to Africa was His desire.  And so I went.  And it has produced lasting tensions.  This year, it was equally clear to me that I was not to go.  Her health has been too fragile to even contemplate it.  Is that but God being merciful towards my shortcomings?  I don’t think so.  I have been quite as confident in this determination as in the former one.

Then, of course, there are questions regarding our daughter and her ways.  She has chosen to abandon Christian faith, though it remains possible, as always, that God will choose otherwise.  She is who she is, and she is growing, perhaps even maturing.  But there are things she would that we would condone and even praise which we cannot.  There are ideas she has for her wedding which would absolutely preclude our participating.  And that hurts.  It’s not the kind of thing one wishes to have to address.  But should it come to it, well, Peter’s admonition of the Sanhedrin would seem to apply.  “We must obey God rather than man.”  And should that come, yes, it will hurt.  I pray it will not come to that.  But God knows what’s needed, and He will do what is best.  And if His best proves challenging, He will provide the strength. He is faithful.

Only let Your presence, Your love, Your Spirit, be evident in how I live out my life.  It will be enough.

Implications for Today (09/28/26)

It seems I am spending all my time on this first verse.  Perhaps it is because the very idea of it is so improbable from the perspective of my experience.  Be that as it may, Luke has found cause to emphasize this particular characteristic of the church; that they were so fully engaged in the new life into which they had passed that they were selling everything to provide support for the Apostolic work, and those being renewed by it.  There was a depth of commitment here that is all but unthinkable.  And that is part of the challenge for me.  I think about it, and it leads to such improbabilities as would lead one to doubt the veracity of Luke’s account.  Yet, Luke has proven reliable time after time.  And this is God’s Word with which we are dealing, which his entirely reliable.  So, these questions I have are not cause for unbelief by any stretch.  But they are a clear marker that something is yet lacking in understanding.

So, let us consider these questions and perhaps we shall find that they guide us to something of worth for our current experience.  Perhaps we shall be granted some degree of wisdom.  The first question I hit concerns the extent of this response.  Logical assessment suggests that if all were selling all their property, then none retained any place to live.  So, then, how could this work?  Where did they live?  As I have repeated observed, their sheer numbers would preclude some common house.  Where in Jerusalem was one going to find such a house as could house a few thousand folks?  Yet, we have this bold statement from Luke that “all who owned land or houses would sell them, bringing the proceeds of the sale to the Apostles to distribute as needed.”  Now, I must observe immediately that while he speaks of all who owned, he does not expressly state that they sold all they owned.  So it may be that these were such as had accumulated properties beyond the needs of immediate housing and homestead.

I recall noting, back in chapter 2, that this being a feast week, there were many come from outside Jerusalem, and outside Israel.  They were from far flung places, and would have property back there.  But if they weren’t going back, there was no need for that property anymore, was there?  And the tribal allotments that defined Israel would not apply in those foreign settings, so it’s possible that they had, through whatever means, obtained greater properties, becoming plantation owners or landlords or the like.  So, one possibility here is that a similar dynamic applies.  That might be thought to be implied by the notice of Barnabas being from Cyprus.  It’s not that he had a flat in Jerusalem somewhere that he sold.  He was selling farmland back in Cyprus, and why not?  He showed no signs of returning to tend to it.  Perhaps it had been let out so as to provide an income while he traveled, who knows?  Nor do we know what other properties he may have owned.

Another potential is that the Apostles, marshaling these funds as they came in, were using them to obtain properties locally that they could then use to house the growing church.  But I think that had that been the case it would have been explicitly noted.  Instead, we are given to understand that whatever funds came in were being used to support those in the church who could not supply their own needs for one reason or another.  That has been where the focus was set.  The Apostles “distributed to each as any had need.”

So, again I note that this was not some demanded action on the part of new believers, that they divest themselves of all earthly wealth and become part of the collective.  It was the organic response of the individual to the discovery that they were part of this growing family whose Father was God.  It was, I think we can say, a faith response, recognizing the reliability of God on whom they relied.  It’s interesting, on that note, to recognize the message of yesterday’s sermon, which focused on Moses’ discussions with God at Mount Sinai, after finding the people so soon fallen into crass idolatry.  God told him to lead them into the land of promise, but then said, “I’m not going with you.”  And Moses insisted, “If you’re not going with us, I’m not going.”  (Ex 33:15).  God, on that occasion responded to Moses’ prayer and acceded.  “I shall go with you, and I shall give you rest.”  Now, I must note that ‘with you’ is not actually there in the passage, but is implied in that he gives rest to ‘you,’ such that the ‘you’ is reflected back into the matter of going.  It is likewise as Moses reiterates his position.  “If you do not go…”  The with you is not there except by implication.  It is only as he expands his point that it becomes explicit.  “How will they know if You don’t go with us, tangibly, thereby distinguishing us from other peoples?” (Ex 33:16).

All of this to say that in this scene in Acts, we are seeing a people assured that God is indeed with them, and He is giving them rest.  That is what has produced in them such an extraordinary response.  And, in whatever from such a response may take in our own congregation, it is the same rock-solid assurance of God’s presence and favor that will have produced the response.

I feel I should also take note of the verb tense in which this action is conveyed to us.  It is the imperfect tense.  In Greek usage, that speaks of a past action that is being viewed as progressive.  It wasn’t some one-time, instantaneous reaction of selling everything by one and all.  It was an ongoing matter.  It was a lifestyle of selflessness.  I had intended to reserve note of this point to the end, because it applies as well to the notice of the Apostolic witness being given, which I will consider in the next section.  It made a nice segue.  But we need it here.  And, I might point out, it applies as well to that business in Exodus, which is likewise in the Imperfect, though now in Hebrew, where the action can as readily be present or future as past.  God would go with them henceforth.  People here, experience the presence of God with them, were shaking loose of their earthly bonds, as it were, and perhaps it is this that we see signified most readily in their selling off of such earthly goods as they found to be more than they needed.  Perhaps, we don’t know, they were even selling more than that, seeking to love their fellow believers as God had so extravagantly loved them.  It is not out of the realm of possibility, however much it might seem irrational and unsustainable.

That will serve as well as anything to turn us to the next question.  If they were in fact selling not only their excess properties, but all their properties, does this suggest that they felt a sense of imminence as concerned the return of Jesus to consummate the kingdom?  We see that such thinking had troubled the church in Thessalonica some years later, and presumably as a response to somebody coming behind Paul to present them with such ideas.  We don’t know whether it was coming from folks who had departed the Jerusalem church or from proponents of some form of belief corrupted by eastern mysticism, but something had stirred that church to depths of concern that perhaps they had missed the return of Christ, or perhaps those among them who had passed away had, in doing so, lost their chance of heaven.  Paul, of course, answers that with firm assurance that when Christ comes, nobody’s going to miss the fact; not the dead, not the damned, certainly not the redeemed.

But if the church in Thessalonica found reason to wonder if this apparent delay in the plans didn’t point to some fault in their faith, wouldn’t this group in Jerusalem have had even greater reason to suppose an immediacy to the fulfillment of all things?  They had seen Christ crucified.  They were sitting daily under the teaching of those who had personally witnessed the reality of His resurrection, who had personally observed His departure into heaven on a cloud, bearing with them the promise of His return, as declared by angelic testimony.  “Men of Galilee, what are you staring at?  You’ve seen Jesus taken up into heaven.  He will come back in the very same way you just saw Him go” (Ac 1:11).  This was still immediate experience.  This was still fresh.  And they had the experiences of Pentecost not so long ago as well, the Holy Spirit come in tangible fashion, as flames of holy fire were seen alighting on each head, as the skies thundered so greatly that people outside gathered in the streets to find out what was going on.  Everything had this immediacy to it.  Everything was amazing.  Shoot, they had just had their gathering place shaken by the powerful response of God to their prayers.  Why wouldn’t they expect things to be coming soon and very soon?

The church still does today!  My wife sings of it all the time, convinced that we are quite likely in that final three year stretch before He returns.  I can’t say that I share that conception of the present state of things, but primarily because I am ever doubtful of anybody who supposes they have the timetable figured out, however vaguely.  He’s coming back, and that is enough.  The timing of it is His business, and He’s made it sufficiently clear that He’s not divulging the details to us.  We are not called to wrangle data in hopes of discerning date certain.  We are called to be ready, day in day out, at all times.

All this to say that yes, there may have been a sense of imminence influencing their decisions, but if that were the case, it is not that sense which is being commended to our attention here, but rather the depths of love.

There is a companion question that arises, given that we know somewhat of the future of this Jerusalem church, even during the relatively brief portion of history covered in this book of Acts.  By the time of Paul’s return and arrest, which was only some twenty years later, the church in Jerusalem was in desperate need.  Famine was afflicting the region, and these, especially after having sold off their lands, were going to be particularly hard hit by the effects.  And, I would note, this wasn’t the first time that church had found itself in need of support.  Earlier, much earlier, we have Paul and Barnabas bearing financial support to them from the church up in Antioch, which wasn’t all that far away.  So, yes, I have some question here, as to whether this decision at the start to sell off all their properties hadn’t in some way led to the resultant poverty of that church?

It is something of an inevitable question, or if you prefer, an inevitable result.  If everybody is selling their possessions to supply the communal church, then eventually, barring some growth model such as MLM outfits propose to their minions, they were assuredly going to run out of money.  It’s inevitable.  As Margaret Thatcher famously observed in regard to socialist or communist forms of governance, it is ever the problem that eventually you run out of other people’s money.  Now, those being forms of governance have another great distinction from what is on display here, in that dissolution of any concept of private property is not a chosen act of compassion on those divesting themselves of such, but rather a compelled, forced divestiture.  As I observed previously, compelled compassion cannot exist.  It is either compassion undertaken by choice, or it is a tax coerced by force.  We can commend the government, I suppose, for its charitable actions, but in fact, they are not charitable.  Charity assumes compassion, and compassion assumes personal choice in the expenditure of personal wealth.

We could turn back to David’s example as king.  He thought to procure a certain field so as to build there an altar to God.  The owner of the field inclined to simply give the field to the king, and why not?  The king could, after all, take it by force should he wish to do so.  Who would stop him?  He has the power.  But David would not have it thus.  Far be it from him to offer to God that which had cost him nothing.  Far be it from him to claim to be giving to God when what was given was not his own!  Or go back to Jacob, dealing with the Canaanites, and purchasing the spot of land where he would bury his wife.  He would not simply take.  He would not dedicate to the Lord that which was not his own.  He would have it done right. 

This is the grand distinction we must recognize in what is before us.  There have been those in the course of history who thought to take this passage, and its companion back in chapter 2, and make of it a commandment.  Thus, they would teach, is the church intended to be:  Communal in nature and practice.  It was tried.  One might construe the monkish orders as attempting to meet this goal.  There were others, a Germanic movement if I recall correctly, that sought to make the case for a sort of Christian communism.  It produced a fine book, but it did not last.  It could not.  It tried to make law out of grace, and grace will not suffer itself to be made a matter of law.

So, to my final question, which is perhaps my first question, is this expressing some sense of expectation that the church henceforth would be communal or is it simply noting the degree of selfless love on display in this congregation?  I think it clear that what is in focus is the latter.  There was a selflessness here, a depth of care one for another, a depth of commitment to seeing this gospel work go forward.  That is what was significant to Luke.  That is what ought to be evident in us.

It’s not a question of form.  It’s a question of heart.  This, I would have to say, is ever the case as we contemplate the implications of new life in Christ.  It’s not that we are presented with a checklist that we must complete every day.  You know, of a Saturday, I will have my itemized list of things to do.  I must note that I have never once completed that list.  But it’s there, and as the day gets properly underway, I look at that list, observe the things that simply must be done today and those that can be put off, and shape my day after what I see.  For the most part, it’s rote.  Groceries need procuring.  Bills need paying.  Participation in the worship team calls for necessary preparation.  We can add guitar practice, but that’s more nearly a daily practice, and not truly at the same level of necessity; more a strong desire that requires of me a bit more discipline than most things.  Then, there are those “should do” items like neatening my area, vacuuming, laundry and the like.  And finally, there are those projects that don’t wish to lose sight of, but which can be put off indefinitely until such time as I have energy, opportunity, and inclination.

We can risk getting the same way with matters of faith.  We make our checklist, prioritize, and get after the top one or two.  But before long, we’re off doing other things.  Or we simply suppose that these other things can be put off, and so we do.  But even with those we have prioritized, it runs the risk of becoming just an exercise done so we can check the box.  We may have ourselves a chart of scheduled matters for prayer.  Pray for these people today, those tomorrow, this matter on Friday, however it may be organized.  And we pull up our chart, knock out our prayers, and call it done.  In what sense?  Was there real connection with what was prayed?  Was there heart involvement?  What of such things as might come up later?  Do we first find a slot for them on our schedule, to get to when we that time comes?

What of this urge we have had expressed to all get on the same page with our weekly devotional times, reviewing whatever passage has been preached that particular Sunday?  I mean, I get it, I guess.  At the same time, I resist it.  But that is not necessarily the right response.  Neither is it necessarily wrong.  If, however, I undertake to follow that pattern out of some sense of obligation, it seems to me that I have completely lost whatever value it might have had.  I’ve just made it a checklist item.  Granted, I run the same risk with these morning studies.  I can readily devolve into going through the motions, sheering off post-haste if it starts to get too close to personal matters.  I try not to do so, but I also know that I will continue this exercise even during such periods as it feels rather a dry pursuit, even if it seems that within minutes of completing my morning time here, all is forgotten.  Because I know it isn’t really.  There may be much that passes before me as I type that is gone about as soon as it’s typed out.  But what needs to register registers.  God sees to it.

And that, I think, is my most fundamental takeaway from the example set before us here.  God sees to it.  What our exercise of compassionate community shapes up to be is something God will see to.  What becomes of this current focus at our church, all the fuss of changing our name and trying to make ourselves more presentable to the community around us, more open or whatever it is we think we’re doing, what shall come of it?  God will see to it.  I do rather wonder if the message this last Sunday, “If You aren’t coming, I won’t go,” reflects something of the same concern on the part of our pastor, though he seems wholly onboard with the whole business.  But yes, if we make it all about nifty signs, clean building, look at all our programs, and how polished our presentation is, then we have utterly missed the point, and the whole venture shall prove to be so much vanity and wind.  And that, I must confess, is what I fear it shall prove to be.  But God will see to it.  We, for our part, must do as we find Him calling us to do.  That is so on the congregational level.  That is so on the individual level.

Sadly, it seems that sometimes those levels come into conflict with one another.  And that draws us to a final consideration for this section.  What are we to do when this sense of being one heart and soul seems strained or absent?  Pray, obviously.  But beyond that, I’m not sure I have answers at all.  Is it evidence of time to move on?  Or is it evidence of a need for personal adjustment?  It could be either, I suppose.  I incline to think it’s more the latter.  But withal, it’s a reading of, “Future uncertain.”  God will see to it.  And I trust that He will make clear to me what is going on and what needs to be done about it.  I will simply note my concurrence with Moses this morning.  “If You’re not in it, I don’t want it.”

Eyewitness Testimony (09/29/26)

Today, I turn my attention to verse 33, which comes across as almost an aside to the rest of our passage.  Here we are, looking at the unity and shared life of the church, and we hit this interjection of the fact that the Apostles were preaching about the resurrection.  No.  It’s not actually a matter of preaching here.  It’s a matter of testimony.  They were giving witness.  But then we’re right back to discussing how everybody was selling off their property to support the fellowship.  One might well wonder a bit why Luke threw this in here.  It feels out of place.  Or maybe, as with the mention of Barnabas at the end, it’s a sort of foreshadowing of other things that will come up later; stage-setting, if you will.

But I don’t think that’s the case.  We are still dealing with things connected to that prayer which rather literally shook the heavens.  They prayed for what?  Confidence to speak God’s word, and the activity of God to back them up in what they said (Ac 4:29-30).  And what happened?  Well, there was that immediate response that they were indeed filled with boldness to speak God’s word – all of them.  What we see here is further answer.  Their unity and mutual care for one another was further answer.  This self-sacrificing love which they displayed in their willingness to use their possessions for the wider life of the church was not like the piety of the Pharisees, practiced to be seen, but cloaking a very self-involved reality of mind.  This was real, and it was very real evidence of God working in their midst.

This notice of the powerful testimony of the Apostles is likewise conveying to us how God chose to answer that prayer.  We have this chain of imperfects going on.  The whole congregation began to speak the gospel with boldness.  The Apostles began to witness with great power, that power giving evidence of God at work behind their testimony.  The congregation began to sell off properties to support the mission.  It’s all beginnings.  And it’s all beginnings that were continuing.  In that sense, it’s all lifestyle.  Things had changed for one and all.  And the change was of a nature to be permanent.  Did the communal organization of that church persist?  That’s unclear.  I would say chances are that it did not.  But it lasted for some time.  And the love and unity established amongst them lasted for some time.  It was not universal, obviously, in any of its aspects.  We have Ananias and Sapphira coming up in the next chapter to make that clear.  We have, also, the problem of the Judaizers which will prove to be a significant thorn in the side of Paul as he brings this gospel to the Gentiles.  These presumably had their roots in this same church.  The Judaizers were not primarily a group seeking to squash Christianity, but rather to shape its practice amongst the Gentiles into something more recognizably Jewish.  That is to say, they weren’t rejecting Christ per se.  They were trying to harmonize Him with Moses.  But that, given the clear declaration of the Jerusalem Council, demonstrates a fracture in the ‘one heart and soul’ of this church.

But I am trying to bring my focus around on this notice of the Apostles themselves.  They began speaking powerfully of what they had witnessed.  From what we have seen of Peter thus far, it would seem this was nothing new, really.  It had been the case since Pentecost, at least, that he spoke with such boldness.  He and John had certainly shown bold confidence in God’s presence and aid as they moved to heal that man on the very outskirts of the temple.  They had been bold indeed to speak to the gathering crowd from Solomon’s porch.  And Peter had been nothing, if not bold, in testifying to the true course of events as he stood before the very Sanhedrin that had condemned Jesus to the cross.

I am struck by the fact that Luke chooses to speak of their witness, not their preaching, not their instruction to the disciples.  It is their witness.  And it is their witness of a particular aspect of this whole matter:  The resurrection of the Lord Jesus.  Apart from this, it seems to me, you have a fine philosophy, but it’s just ideas and opinions.  Come to the resurrection, and you have something visceral – unbelievable, but visceral.  Here is a truth claim that makes or breaks whatever doctrines they might teach.  In declaring Jesus alive from the grave, they declared something which, if not necessarily testable by those who heard, was so grounded in historical, real life, claims as to require a response.  People knew, I suspect, of the empty grave.  People had heard the official story, how the disciples had come and stolen His body to back their so-called prophecy of His rising again.  They tried so hard to make a fiction of it.  But anybody pausing long enough to consider it must have wondered how this ragtag team could have pulled it off when there was a Roman military contingent on site.  Like so many conspiracy theories, the necessary supporting structure to render the claim believable simply defied belief.  Really?  This unarmed group manage to roll that stone uphill without so much as making enough noise to wake a sleeping guard?  How did they do this?  How many would it have taken to roll the stone, ignoring the noise factor?  And how did they coordinate without words, in the dark?  Granted, the Roman guards may have thought their duty laughable.  They may even have been drinking on the job, enjoying a bit of a break out here, away from the oversight of their commanders.  But even with that, the whole idea of a body theft going on under their noses is rightly laughable.

So, the testimony comes from those who were there.  We saw Him.  We talked with Him.  We ate with Him.  No ghost, this.  No ethereal spirit or vision.  And it wasn’t some one-off event.  It wasn’t some response of mass hysteria.  Look.  When He ascended alive into heaven, there were what, 500 people watching?  That’s beyond the possibility of even mass hysteria.  We all saw it.  We were there!  Were the Pharisees?  Were the Sanhedrin?  I don’t think so.  How, then, can they say with any sort of certainty that it did not happen?  They are stuck with mere opinion.  We speak of what we saw and touched and knew.

Go back again to John’s first epistle.  “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled:  The Word of Life manifested!” (1Jn 1:1-2a).  That’s what we are proclaiming to you.  Or hear Peter on the point.  “We didn’t come up with some clever tales in making the power and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ known to you.  We were eyewitnesses of His majesty!  We were there when He received glory and honor from God the Father, Who said – audibly, in our hearing – ‘This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased.’  We heard it ourselves because we were with Him there on the holy mountain” (2Pe 1:16-18).  That would seem to have been something of a theme with them.  We were there.  We saw.  We heard.  We know because we lived it.  This is the Jesus we are making known to you.

This is the assurance that produced the boldness.  They weren’t just debating doctrinal niceties, devising a new and perhaps better way of living out their prior beliefs.  They had seen the Lord.  They had seen Him for years.  They had known Him from His earliest beginnings in ministry, through to His arrest, death, and yes, resurrection.  They had heard His teaching, seen His example, witnessed His miraculous works.  And slowly, ever so slowly, they had come to realize the point behind those miracles.  It wasn’t a show.  It wasn’t advertising to draw the masses.  It was evidence.  It was evidence that God was with Him, but more, it was evidence that He Himself was in fact God Incarnate, the Son of the living God.

In a world that posits all manner of gods, and most of them rather remote and unreachable, this is something stunning.  The gods of the Greeks and the Romans were perhaps considered powerful by those who followed them, but they were only barely interested in the concerns of humanity.  Humanity were as playthings for them, a source of amusement.  Artemis, we note, was felt to be at risk of becoming nothing, should her followers abandon her.  Turn your eyes to Islam, and what do you have?  Here is a god who makes demands of his followers, but makes no promises.  He’s not particularly involved in their lives, just sitting about, waiting to pass judgment on them when they die.  And they can never know any confidence as to how that will go for them.  It’s a sword of Damocles hanging over them all their days, whether they will have done enough ‘good’ to counter their evils and gain admittance into paradise.  Hinduism?  God’s are a dime a dozen, it seems, and entirely beyond knowing.  There is just this hope of eventually having gone through life enough times to get it right and be absorbed into whatever this other state of being turns out to be.

But here is God come to dwell amidst His creation as one of them.  Here is the God who made man made man Himself, and doing so with one intent:  To satisfy His own necessarily invoked justice so as to demonstrate His essential love and mercy towards His own.  He came.  He lived.  He taught and healed and cast out demons, doing all with an eye to showing the world the kingdom of God breaking through, drawing near, offering an answer to sin.  Moses had offered a salve.  Yet Mosaic Law, even if it had been possible to keep perfectly, could not in fact resolve the problem of sin.  As David had proclaimed in the agony of his wrestling, “I was conceived in sin” (Ps 51:5).  Before first breath, it was already far too late to manage compliance with the requirements of holiness.  And having sinned against eternal God even once, already the penalty of eternal death was beyond any man’s ability to repay.  But comes Jesus, the eternal Son of God, living as a man, yet sinless; sinless even in His conception, being as He is, conceived of the Holy Spirit; and here is One who measured up.  Here is One Whose death has eternal merit, and He willingly gave Himself to death not as penalty for His own sins, for He had none.  He did so for us, that we might enjoy the righteousness of Christ Himself imparted to us, knowing our sins forgiven, our debt paid, our welcome in heaven assured.

Now, for the Apostles, this was, as is stressed here, a matter of eyewitness testimony.  We saw.  We heard.  We knew the Man, both before and after His death.  We ate with Him, both before and after His death.  That point is crucial to the understanding that He was actually, literally, bodily alive and well and with them subsequent to dying.  His death was plenty real.  Joseph of Arimathea could testify to that, and he, a member of the Sanhedrin.  The centurion who saw to His crucifixion, having ordered His body pierced, and seen the blood and water, could testify to that, and one suspects he did so.  His death was clear, undeniable, historical fact.  Christ crucified.  His life was well-known to so many.  The things He had done were witnessed by hundreds, by thousands.  The things He had taught, He had taught openly, to any willing to sit and listen.  The resurrection, though:  That was the unbelievable bit.  That was the less observed and known part.  But these men observed.  They knew.  And as they testified to what they saw and knew, they were backed up by the evidence of God working in and through them.

The healing of that lame man outside the temple had been to just such purpose.  The people understood.  No man could be doing such things except God was with him.  This was God’s own witness to their veracity.  They could be trusted.  When, one might ask, had He ever done as much for the Sanhedrin?  They knew.  And thus, as the Apostles spoke of what they had seen and heard, it was believed, even though it was so unbelievable.  Those listening had reason to believe.  And as they experienced the inward work of God in themselves, they had their own testimony to add.  This may not have had the same sort of power as the Apostolic news of a resurrected Lord of Life, known and beheld by them.  But it had power.  It had such power that Luke says of the group, “And abundant grace was upon them all.”  It is in support of that statement that he turns back to the matter of their selling off property to help their brothers and sisters in need.

Abundant grace:  Grace overflowing.  The phrase comes to mind, “Eminent grace.”  I had to look up where it was I had that phrase from, and it is apparently a French phrase describing a powerful, if covert decision maker.  But that French phrase, while it may sound like eminent grace, is actually speaking of eminence grey, after the grey clothing of the monk LeClerc, side-man of Cardinal Richelieu, to whom it was first applied.  But let’s not be misled by that association.  This is no agent of shadow government, no deep-state operative that we are considering.  This is the impact of the very present, very alive God of all Creation working in and through His people.

Of course, we have not only the matter of eminence, abundance.  We have the matter of grace; that elusive word so firmly associated with Christian faith.  Grace was upon them.  That suggests that whatever this grace is, it was something outside themselves.  Indeed, I would insist it very much was something outside themselves.  It was the power of God, the self-same power that was infusing the witness of the Apostles.  In that light, what we are seeing in them, in all the aspects of this passage, is what Strong defines as ‘the divine influence upon the heart.’  Where there is divine influence upon the heart, it will demonstrate in graciousness of word and deed.  It will show in gratitude towards God, and compassion towards man.  It will show in that intersection of vertical and horizontal loves, connected in Christ.

Now, I have identified this business of witness as something distinct from preaching.  It is not the didactic stuff of teaching.  It is not the homiletics associated with modern preaching, where one takes a passage and seeks to find means of applying it to present-day life.  It’s not the exegetical exercise of seeking to rightly interpret Scriptures so as to proclaim them truly and accurately.  All of this is good and necessary.  But there is this other component of preaching that is emphasized in this case, and while we are assuredly not Apostles, lacking as we necessarily do the fundamental requirement of having been there with Jesus as He ministered so as to be eyewitnesses, yet we do have ‘direct knowledge of reality’ when it comes to the work of God in the people who are His Church.  I take that phrase from Zhodiates.  The preacher today is every bit as involved in proclaiming the Christian revelation from a base of being material witness to that revelation, having direct knowledge of the God Who Is, and of His work amongst man.

This is the power of the Gospel.  It’s not that reading out those words verbatim will suffice in itself to cause hearts to change.  It may.  God can do things however He pleases.  But what gives the Gospel its power is that it is proclaimed by those whose hearts it has already changed.  Hear me carefully on this.  We know of those who have come to faith with no evident human intervention.  It’s probably the more common course, honestly.  I would suppose it exceedingly rare that somebody has come to faith simply by sitting in church listening to a sermon.  I don’t preclude it, but it seems the least likely of avenues.  But faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Ro 10:17).  But that hearing is not just the reciting of words.  It is testimony.  It is hearing what is said with the conviction that comes of knowing the truth, the reality of what is being said.  Some speak of it as relationship rather than head knowledge.  That’s as good a distinction as any, I suppose.  Phrase it how you will.  But the power of preaching, the power of the Gospel, lies in this intersection of true words spoken with the conviction that comes of true experience of the true power of God.

This power is made available to us.  We needn’t go off to seminary to obtain official sanction.  The Apostles certainly didn’t.  The elders of the early churches didn’t.  How could they?  Such facilities did not exist!  But it’s not reserved for those in leadership, either.  It’s the universal call to all who are claimed as children of the Most High God.  If He is your Father, be glad of it.  Be proud of it.  Let the world around you know of it.  And let them know that He loves them, too, and would gladly receive them into His family, as would we.

The Heart of Prophecy (09/30/26)

The last topic I want to touch on in this passage is the introduction of Barnabas.  This, I would note, is a true touch of artistry on Luke’s part.  He doesn’t point us forward to the important role he would have in the development of the church, nor, I think, would Barnabas have wanted himself painted in any outsized prominence.  What do we learn of him here?  Well, we learn that Barnabas wasn’t his given name, but one assigned him by the Apostles.  His given name was Joseph.  And we learn that he was from Cyprus, though he was Jewish.  So he is a product of the Diaspora.  The matter of being from Cyprus actually is a bit of foreshadowing, and ought to be born in mind when we come to the portions of this book that cover Paul and Barnabas in their mission work.  That, however, is some distance from here, especially at the rate I am moving.  In point of fact, we won’t hear of Barnabas again for several chapters yet.  He only comes back into view as Saul arrives on the scene as a believer.

What I want us to see, and what Luke himself encourages us to consider, is this name which the Apostles gave him.  For if they gave him a name we ought to assume that there is significance to the name they gave.  Luke spells it out for us.  This means, per the NASB, Son of Encouragement.  Other translations offer something a bit different.  The KJV offers us son of consolation, the ASV son of exhortation.  The term being translated here is paraklesis, which can bear any or all of those meanings.  It could, as Unger’s suggests was intended, indicate a capacity for teaching, one given to “persuasive discourse,” to borrow from Thayer’s lexical reference.  That work also considers this to be the active sense in our passage:  One who exhorts.  But a son of exhortation!  That’s something, isn’t it?  That’s expressive of the heart of the man, evidence of a passion; passion here taken in a good sense.

Yet, I incline to find it at least as likely that this was more reflective of the spirit of the man than of a particular talent.  And in that sense, I find the predominant translation of encouragement well suited to what we see of his activities.  Our next encounter with him will be his role in making Saul welcome in the Jerusalem church.  Think of it!  Here was the man who had made it his personal mission to eradicate this Christian sect, who had even wrangled a commission from the Sanhedrin to take his purge to Damascus where some of the believers had fled.  And now, he was back in Jerusalem and claiming to be a Christian himself.  Who could trust this?  It had to be a ruse of some sort, Saul attempting to discover the church’s members so he could arrest them in one big sweep, perhaps.  And all Barnabas had to go on at that point was such news as had come back from Damascus about this man.  Yet, he accepts that news at face value, receives the account of Saul’s encounter on the road to Damascus, and relates the same to the Apostles.  He lets them know that this Saul fellow is okay (Ac 9:27).  It’s real.  He’s with us.  This is the act of an encourager, not a teacher.  A teacher might be capable of assessment, though I don’t know as that’s necessarily a given.  But this isn’t imparting doctrine.  It’s receiving a brother.

Perhaps he had a gift of discernment to accompany his teaching abilities.  There’s some sense that this might be the case in that the Apostles later sent him up to Antioch to assess what God was doing there as the Gospel began to spread to the Gentiles (Ac 11:22).  But look at that term again.  Paraklesis; it’s impossible not to see its association with the descriptor given the Holy Spirit, the Paraklete, actually, another Paraklete, for Jesus also has this title.  And on what basis?  He is one Who comes alongside.  Why does He come alongside?  To counsel, to encourage, to comfort, to admonish in love, all this and more.  And here was a son of paraklesis, one who exercised these same functions, if on a lesser, human scale.  It was thus that he was sent to Antioch.  It wasn’t a question of sending him to rebuke their errant practices.  It was more along the lines of the later response of Berea to the Gospel; confirming the truth of the Gospel in this work.  He was sent to encourage – to instruct if needed, to correct lovingly should that prove to be required, but primarily to encourage that which was right.

Okay.  So I’ve come this far and have yet to draw near to the title I have given this part of the study, “The Heart of Prophecy.”  So let’s see if I can take us there.  We have seen this varied set of attributes assigned to the label given to Barnabas.  Now, let us look at what Paul has to say about prophecy.  Writing to Corinth, he indicates that one who prophesies speaks, ‘for edification, exhortation, and consolation’ (1Co 14:3).  It’s not about foretelling future events.  It’s not about proclaiming the end of the world and bewailing the woes to befall mankind.  That may enter into it, but it’s not the primary function.  I find myself focused the more on that point as we are working through the Revelation in men’s group.  That book was not written to instill fear and trepidation in the church, nor even, I think, as warning of trials to come.  There is edification to be had in it, though that edification can be difficult to discern amidst all the symbolism and simile.  Certainly, there is exhortation there, particularly in those letters written to the churches.  But there is a constant heartbeat of consolation as well.  These events, dire though they may be in the telling, are the consolation of the redeemed.  There is rejoicing in heaven to see these things finally coming to pass.  Those gone home before us ask anxiously, “how much longer?”  Not the anxiousness of doubt, but the expression of anticipating desire.  And when judgment comes in full, it is not a matter for hiding away, but for worship.  “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come” (Rev 12:10).  “Rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them” (Rev 12:12).

Admittedly, there is much there, particularly in these middle chapters, that could lead the believer to be concerned for the future.  For those living under the realities of Roman persecution, these weren’t matters of vague possibility should they be alive at the time.  They were alive at the time, knew full well the deadly peril.  But they knew equally fully the strength of Christ’s gift of life.  “He who believes in Me shall live even if he dies” (Jn 11:25).  “Don’t fear those who kill the body, but can’t kill the soul.  Rather, revere Him who is able to destroy both in hell” (Mt 10:28).  Note the setting of that last.  Jesus is in the process of proclaiming God’s extravagant love and care.  “Do not fear.  You are more valuable than many sparrows” (Mt 10:31).  This isn’t a message of rebuke, but of encouragement.  So, too, the Revelation.  “Therefore rejoice!”  And we come to the close of that grand vision and find our Apostle proclaiming, “Even so, Lord!  Come quickly!”  Maranatha!  It was the cry of the early church.  It ought yet to be the cry of the late church.

So, was Barnabas a prophet?  Unclear.  Together with Saul he is given the label of apostle, though at that juncture, I think we must see it in its lower case application; one sent on a specific mission to deliver a specific message as commissioned by those doing the sending.  That same applies to the Apostles, to be sure, but at a different level, and with a more significant authority.  But let us suppose something of the prophet’s gift.  Again, the very description of him as comforter, exhorter, encourager, puts him in the place of the prophet’s function.  We may tend to think of that function as it gets described by Reformed preachers; a covenant prosecutor, come to convict the covenant members of their failures and get them back in line.  But for the faithful, reminders of covenant can and should be reminders of God’s promises and His faithfulness.  They ought to assure at least as much as they cause dismay at our condition.

Would you be a son of encouragement?  I think in general a son of encouragement is one of the most welcome and most needful parts of the Christian body.  This is not a matter of flattery.  It’s a matter of recognizing and acknowledging the work of God in this or that individual.  It’s a matter of appreciating the heart and the gifts of a brother in Christ, a sister in the Lord.  It’s a matter of coming alongside those who may be down and reminding them of the Lifter of their head; recalling to their mind those things God has declared in His Word.  This doesn’t need mystical, prophetic utterances, or, “I feel the Lord is saying.”  The Lord has said.  It’s there in black and white.

I know at various points I have expressed the desire to be Onesimus, useful.  That is, perhaps, a particularly male perspective on the thing.  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s some other thread in the fabric of being.  But it’s something I feel often.  But I know I have been most gratified, most grateful when it has been observed that I am an encourager.  I wonder, sometimes, if I’ve rather lost that trait.  I can get acerbic.  Arguably, that’s my more usual state.  But when I see somebody giving themselves into the service of the Lord, doing things not in response to somebody’s command, but simply because it’s there in need of doing and they will gladly do it, I notice, and I want them to know that they are noticed.  It’s one thing to be of the sort to work behind the scenes, and I have generally been inclined to that myself, I think.  But even those working behind the scenes can use the encouragement of being recognized and acknowledged.  There is something magnificent in simply letting your fellow believer know, “I’m glad you’re here.” 

Let us be free with our acknowledgements.  Let us be earnest in our appreciation of our fellow believers, whatever their contributions.  We are promised that each and every one of us has some gift to be put into service for the edification of the whole.  When, therefore, we see somebody exercising their gift, whatever that gift may be, let it be noted.  Let it be appreciated.  Let it be encouraged.  Let us all seek to be sons of encouragement.  Perhaps then we would find ourselves less in need of a son of admonition.