Sunday 3rd November
Read Psalm 81
If you don’t have a bible at home you can find the readings on a website such as www.biblegateway.com or an app such as YouVersion
The occasion for this Psalm was the Feast of Tabernacles, the time when the community, after they were settled in houses in the land, left their houses and dwelt in little booths or tabernacles for the feast. It was a feast of remembrance and thanksgiving. They remembered their past enslavement in Egypt and they rejoiced in their present situation. Christian people are commanded to rejoice today in our lives and in our worship, the reason being that through Christ we are forgiven our sins and have an eternal hope. However, like the people of Israel, we have a temptation to fall back. God reminds the people of what he has done for them and says, “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it” (v10). Are you ready to be filled today in your worship and thanks?
READINGS FOR THE WEEK AHEAD
As you read the Bible Stop; Read; Ponder; and Pray.
After the settlement of the matter of Gentiles in the Church community, the apostles and elders with the whole church (notice how the whole church agreed with the apostles and elders) decided that they must send out their decision to the church elsewhere and so they wrote a letter and sent it with Barnabus and Saul together with Silas and Judas to explain the situation.
It is always good to spread a matter round when agreement has been reached and not to split the church by allowing different positions to remain. Different positions have always abounded in the church but we shouldn’t allow this to continue. Despite the Jerusalem Council’s declaration, the judaising element continued to cause trouble within the Church, Paul’s letter to the Galatians shows it to have influenced the churches far away from Jerusalem and its surrounds.
After delivering the letter from the Jerusalem Council, Paul and Barnabus continued for some time teaching and preaching but after a while Paul said to Barnabus that they should revisit the towns where they had preached in their missionary journey to see how they were doing. Both seemed to be agreed on this but a disagreement arose about whether Mark should go with them. He had been with them on the first journey but left after Pamphylia for whatever reason we are not sure but Paul was not happy to take him and so a split between them came about, Barnabus taking Mark and going to the first part of their initial journey, Cyprus, and Paul taking Silas and departing through Syria and Cilicia to the area of the second half of their initial journey.
Luke, the writer, makes no remark on this other than to just tell us. Perhaps sometimes it may be necessary for people to part company but continue to go about God’s work in separate ways.
They came to Derbe then to Lystra where they met Timothy who was highly spoken of by the believers in Lystra and Iconium and Paul wanted him to join them on their missionary journey. It is here that many people are baffled as to why Paul wants him to be circumcised as a Jew (his father was Greek) but it was not because Paul was falling back into the judaising beliefs we have heard of but that he was considering matters from a practical point of view. If he was going to be going from synagogue to synagogue in preaching Timothy’s gentile background would be seen as a scandal – at least until people heard and accepted the gospel.
Sometimes, though from a real perspective that something isn’t necessary, from a practical point of view, it is better just to comply with the culture.
These are interesting verses about the movements of Paul and his companions. We should note first that, like Jesus, their travels were all on foot, no motorways or cars in those days. Their travels were guided by the Holy Spirit – see verses 4-6 but how? Presumably this was by an internal guiding that they felt (and knew) was the Holy Spirit. If we seek to keep in step with the Spirit’s guidance in our lives there are times when we know something inside us in not just our own inclination but of course we need to be living prayerful lives.
Although Paul and his companions wanted to go to certain towns in the area of modern NW Turkey the guidance of the Spirit led them down to the sea and to Troas, a city on the Aegean coast opposite Macedonia. In the night Paul had a vision of a man saying “Come over to Macedonia and help us”. The group felt this was an indication that they should leave Asia Minor for Macedonia and eventually Greece itself.
Are we sensitive to the Spirit’s leading in our own lives? That’s always a question for all of us.
Friday Acts 16:11-15
Obedient to the summons of the man across the sea, Paul and his companions set sail across the Aegean, stopping at the island of Samothrace and then on to Neapolis but they didn’t stop there but went inland to Philippi which was the leading city of the Roman province of Macedonia. We aren’t given details of why Paul didn’t stop at certain places but did at others but it may be that he always sought out a Jewish community because although he is spoken of as the apostle to the Gentiles, he always tried to begin with the Jews. After all the gospel is “to the Jews first and also to the Gentiles” (Roms 1:16)
They found a place of prayer by the river where there was a gathering of woman, the fact that men aren’t mentioned may be that there was a sparsity of Jewish men in the city and Lydia who was in important business woman in the city may have led the women gathered for prayer. Lydia heard the message Paul preached and became a believer, being baptised along with members of her household. Her house thereafter became a residence for Paul and fellows. We see right away that conversion bound believers together such that hospitality became an assumed thing among the believing community.
Paul and his companions began to meet regularly with the group that gathered for prayer and this obviously became known by some including a servant girl who when she saw them exclaimed, “these men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved”. Having kept this up for many days Paul got annoyed. “Why”, we might ask. We don’t know the manner or tone in which she was saying it – though she was shouting. Could it have been ironic? The only clue we may get from the test is that Luke tells us she had a spirit that told the future. When Paul had had enough he turned round and said, “in the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her”. This introduces us to the subject of spirit possession. Something which isn’t of the person but affects the person seems to be the heart of this troubling issue. Paul recognises this and speaks not to the girl but the spirit affecting the girl and commands it to leave. Her conscious presence is changed such the prediction role she had was gone. She was a slave girl and her masters had used her predictive role for profit but now that profit was gone and her healing became a cause celebre with Paul and Silas being attacked and dragged before the magistrates.
When Christian practice interferes with the life of the world around we can expect repercussions. Usually this is in the moral realm where Christians will not concur with practices the world sees profitable but as Paul went on to say to the Corinthian church Christians cannot bring into the church the practices of the world or like yeast it will affect the whole body (1 Corinthians 5).
