Search the Scriptures

What did the disciples do during this waiting period?

Firstly, they obeyed Jesus' command to wait. They prayed and obviously searched the scripture together. Peter preached. He ascribed the prophecy of Judas' betrayal and replacement to the Holy Spirit. "The Holy Spirit spoke long ago through the mouth of David concerning Judas.." (v16) Does He still speak through the mouth of men? Granted that nothing we say carry the same weight as the Scripture, but does He still use people to bring a message across? I think so. Nowhere in the Scripture says that He will stop doing that after a certain time. Well, Elijah the greatest of the prophets were referred to by James to be 'a man just like us'. If the Holy Spirit can speak through Elijah, He can certainly speak through us. Didn't Jesus said we will do 'greater things than these?' But how are we to discern if anything spoken is from God? When Paul preached about Christ to the Bereans in Acts 17, they 'searched the scripture daily to see if these things were so.' As a result many believed. We should do the same to test the validity of any teaching.

They deemed it necessary to choose someone to replace Judas in the light of the prophecy in Psalm 109:8 in order that the Scripture may be fulfilled. The qualification of the one chosen is that he must have been with Jesus from the time Christ was baptized by John, marking the beginning of his public ministry, to the time of his ascension. The reason given was "for one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection."-v22
Jesus' charge to them was :"You shall be my witnesses." Witness to what? Among all other things, it must be to his resurrection. Everyone in Jesus' days knew what he had done and taught. But not all had witnessed his resurrection. We are called to be witnesses to a living Lord. In our proclamation, we must include Christ's death on our behalf as well as his resurrection. We are exhorted to be ready at all time to give the reason for our hope. The choosing of Matthias tells us that we can know that the records we have in the New testament about Jesus' teaching and deeds were reliable because it was handed down to us by first hand eye witnesses, many of whom died for their proclamation.

In the background to the left two men can be seen who let the wounded man lay on the road when they passed him by. They were a priest and a man from the house of Levi; obviously they were not as righteous as there reputations would suggest. Only the Samaritan helped the wounded man.
Van Gogh was staying in an institution for the mentally ill when he painted this work, in May 1890. It is a mirrored copy of Eugène Delacroix' Good Samaritan. Van Gogh also made a copy of Delacroix' Pietà.

The Return of the Prodigal Son (1662)
This piece is the most monumental of Rembrandt’s paintings and stands above the achievements of all other Baroque artists of the time in its evocation of mood and human tenderness. Rembrandt painted this masterpiece towards the end of his career, but it is obvious that his skill in realism had not faded. Critics of this piece remark that age had only brought Rembrandt a heightened sense of psychological and spiritual insight. The artist’s use of expressive lighting and coloring in this painting along with the most simple of settings help the audience to feel the full impact of the event. Wanting to depict a tired and defeated son returning home to his father, Rembrandt compassionately painted the outstretched arms of a man happy to see his son return to him. The painting is symbolic of homecoming and illuminates the human willingness to offer shelter to those who have experienced darkness.

http://www.rembrandtprints.org/paintings.html

Meditation from Acts 1:1-11

What did Jesus do in between his ascension and resurrection? V3 - He gave convincing proofs that he was alive. Why do they need proof when they can see him? After Jesus was crucified, the disciples were not ready, even reluctant to believe that He was alive again. They thought that was the end. They have retreated to the life before they became Christ's followers. They needed some convincing. Perhaps Jesus needed to show them he was not a ghost or spirit, that he indeed had been raised from the dead - a fact crucial to the Christian faith, for Paul says that if this were not so we are to be pitied of all men. (In fact one of the facts that proves that they have met the risen Lord is the 180 degrees change before and after they saw the risen Christ; from disheartened cowards to fearless martyrs.) We must be ready to give convincing proofs of Jesus' resurrection too to all who question our faith. As Peter puts it in 1 Peter 3:15: 'But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.....' Are we ready? Always ready?
Verse 3 tells us that Jesus also continued to speak about the kingdom of God after he rose from the dead. From Jesus' teaching throughout the New Testament we see that Jesus' preoccupation and central teaching is the kingdom of God. Think of all his parables and his teaching on prayer - ‘thy kingdom come’. The good news we tell must include the bigger picture of God's kingdom, which we are to seek first above all else - 'seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness' - not our self righteousness, but the righteousness that comes from faith in Christ, whereby Christ’s righteousness becomes ours as we put our trust in him who has come to fulfill the prophets and the laws as testified by the transfiguration event where Moses - symbolizing the law, and Elijah- representing all the prophets, stood by his sides on Mount Olive.
Jesus commanded his disciples to wait for the gift which the Father promised - the Holy Spirit. The giving of the Spirit is given as a gift, therefore we cannot demand it; but it is a promise, therefore we can claim it by faith. Verse 6 reveals that the priority of the disciples is not the same as God's, all the kingdom talks only seemed to strengthen their desire for the restoration of the earthly kingdom - Israel. Their understanding of the Messiah and the kingdom of God is still narrow and confounded. Is our priority the same as God’s? What should it be?

Jesus' answer shows us that God the Father has full authority over the direction of history. What we must be concern now is to be his witnesses, starting from where we are, to the ends of the earth. And our witnessing will have power because Jesus also promised his disciples that they will receive power when they are baptized with the Holy Spirit. But they were to wait until then.

Elsewhere it is written: 'Not by might, not by power but by your Spirit, says the Lord' The power for holy living and effective service comes from the Holy Spirit. Thus it follows that it is crucial for believers to live by the Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit is a command. Thus we must make it our priority also to find out what it means to live by the Spirit and how can we be filled with the Spirit. Alas, so often we read God’s word with the lenses of our prejudices and our human traditions when we come to things we don’t quite understand! We don't need to be afraid of talking about the Holy Spirit and His gifts just because some Christians had abused and taught wrong teachings about it. We all need to be Christ’s followers who are both Bible believing and Spirit-filled!

While entrance into the kingdom of God is by the grace of God through faith in Christ alone as we are born again by the Spirit, to live the kingdom life we need no less than the power of God's Spirit too, until Christ comes again as promised here in V11.

("We" includes me)

Text:
1 Peter 1
1 'This letter is from Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to God’s chosen people who are living as foreigners in the lands of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, the province of Asia, and Bithynia.'

Reflection:
Are you a foreigner? Do you sometimes feel that you don’t belong? If you want to live out your faith you will at some point feel that you don’t fit in.

Text:
2 'God the Father chose you long ago, and the Spirit has made you holy. As a result, you have obeyed Jesus Christ and are cleansed by his blood.'

Reflection:
Who are being mentioned in this verse?
This verse mentions all three members of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit. All members of the Trinity work to bring about our salvation.

What is the order of things in our salvation story?
1. The Father chose us before we chose him (Ephesians 1:4).
2. Jesus Christ, the Son, died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:6-10).
3. The Holy Spirit brings us the benefits of salvation and sets us apart (makes us holy, sanctifies us) for God’s service (2 Thessalonians 2:13). By our faith in Christ, we are made holy/righteous before God, “made you holy” - something that happened in the past, a definite point in time; it results in us obeying Jesus Christ and our sins forgiven because of his death (blood always refer to death).
Here in is the good news, the gospel.

What do you wish and pray for people?
What do you pray for others? How do you decide what to pray for?
When you don’t know what to pray, look to the bible for clues.
May you have more and more of God’s special favor and wonderful peace.

Text:
The Hope of Eternal Life
3 All honor to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is by his boundless mercy that God has given us the privilege of being born again. Now we live with a wonderful expectation because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead.

Reflection:
The order: The Mercy of God – our rebirth - we live with hope of resurrection – Glory to God. Being born again is a privilege, because it is not earned or deserved, it is by the mercy of God. A privilege that should cause us to 'live with a wonderful expectation'. What wonderful expection? Eternal life in Jesus Christ who rose from the dead! He has conquered death for us! We shall not be eternally separated from God, from whom all blessings flow! Am I living with this wonderful expectation? All these is so that God will receive all honor. As we were taught how to pray by Jesus :" Hallowed be thy name!"

Text:
4 For God has reserved a priceless inheritance for his children. It is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.

Reflection:
What are the things you treasure the most?
What will happen to them eventually?
What does ‘reserved’ imply? Think about parking, 1st class seats, place of honor, highly priced, the things that are specially meant for you…
What is the value of our inheritance reserved for us by God?
What is the chance of losing it? Have you lost anything precious? What is its nature?

Our inheritance from God is kept in heaven safe and sound! IT will never be lost or stolen! It's value will never go down! It is priceless because it cannot be bought!

Text:
5 And God, in his mighty power, will protect you until you receive this salvation, because you are trusting him. It will be revealed on the last day for all to see. 6 So be truly glad! There is wonderful joy ahead, even though it is necessary for you to endure many trials for a while.

Reflection:
What is the promise? Positively and negatively?
Who will protect us from reaching our inheritance?
Remember that the inheritance belongs only to those who endure to the end, those who are kept in God’s mighty power because they are trusting in him (cf. Luke 8:13). God himself is our only guarding power (Jude 1; Philippians 1:6; 4:7).
through faith — We should not think that we will be guarded by God if we are not walking by faith. We receive salvation through faith, by trusting Him. Our salvation is also kept by our faith. True faith is a lasting faith. True faith withstands the test of trials.
What are trials? - Persecution and suffering for Christ’s sake. Situations that put our faith to the test.
Have you been tested?
When will our salvation be revealed?
Salvation will not only be ours by title because of what Christ has done, but it will be expressed and demonstrated, finally and completely, in our lives. It will be revealed in the last time—When Christ is revealed, that salvation will be revealed.

Refiner’s fire
For Christmas, anniversaries or birthdays, jewelry is always a popular gift item. Gold jewelry is made from 14-karat, 18-karat, 22-karat, or 24-karat gold.
The content of gold alloys is expressed in 24ths, called karats; a 12-karat gold alloy is 50 percent gold, 18 karat is 75% Gold and 24-karat gold is pure.

Do you know that:
1 ounce (28 g) can be beaten out to 187 square feet!
What do you know about the metal refining process that brings about such beauty and quality? - Burned over 1000 degrees, to remove impurities.

Text:
7 These trials are only to test your faith, to show that it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold — and your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold. So if your faith remains strong after being tried by fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.

Reflection:
Why does God allow trails? What is its purpose?
The trial of your faith which is more precious than gold that perishes — If gold, which will eventually perish, is tried with fire in order to remove the dross and test its genuineness, how much more does your faith, which will never perish, need to pass through a similarly fiery trial to remove whatever is defective and to test its genuineness and true value ?
God allows trials (cf. with James 1:2) in order to prove by testing the eternal quality of the believer’s faith.
How can you tell if your faith is real?
What happen when you burn a lump of metal with intense heat when there is no gold in it?
Nothing will be left behind.
As fire distinguishes true gold from the counterfeit, so trials distinguish genuine faith from superficial profession.
“When we suffer, God is looking to see how we respond. For we all suffer, but we don’t all grow as a result. Crises can drive us away from God or towards Him.
We can become bitter people or we can become better people. (Don't know where I heard that) The choice is ours, for it is not through the suffering itself that makes us mature, it is through our response to it that we mature and develop.
"It’s bad enough to go through suffering, but it’s worse to do so and not profit from it.” (Read from somewhere)
What is the future outcome of a believer’s faith?
Andrew Murray’s "formula for trial" provides a good basis for our response in times of difficulty:
1. He brought me here. It’s by His will I am in this straight place. In that fact I will rest.
2. He will keep me here in His love and give me grace to behave as His child.
3. Then He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends me to learn.
4. In His good time, He will bring me out again — how and when He knows.
We are (a) Here by God’s appointment. (b) In His keeping. (c) Under His training. (d) For His time.


Remember, trials and testing of our faith does not come from listening to sermons or reading the Bible. It comes from being exposed to difficult situations and enduring affliction.

What do you do when you undergo trials?

Remember these verses:
1 Peter 1:6,7 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

2. Pray that you recognize the hand of the Refiner in difficult situations.

True faith is enduring faith. Has your faith been tested lately? Are we trusting Him today?

What sets us apart from all the other animals is not only that we possess opposible thumbs, but also that we have the capability to think and ask deep questions. Decarte said: "I think therefore I am". Pascal said, "we may be feeble as a reed, but we are a thinking reed." It is written in the Scriptures: "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." In other words - we are what we think.

God is so sanguine towards sinners that he can forgive and forgive, regardless of the nature of our sin, accepts us just as we are at the point of our new birth, so seemingly phlegmatic that he can be silent towards his people enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, and letting us crucified His only begotten son on the cross without coming to his aid, letting sinners curse Him and abuse His name on a daily basis, so melancholy that he planned our salvation before the foundation of the world to make us his people, (how melancholy? He prepared a whole nation through thousands of years for the arrival of His Son, our saviour, foreshadowed in the old temple worship system he specifically instructed; the high priest, the sacrifice, the inner sanctuary etc, so that when Christ came, all these things are fulfilled in Him - our high priest who can understand us, having been a human and tempted just as we are, who was God from God, showing us what God is like, was our once for all perfect sacrificial lamb, being without sin from Spirit conceived virgin birth, and also by virtue of having lived a sinless life, our temple where we meet God, where perfect excess to God was provided through his death and resurrection so that we can come to his throne of grace anytime and anywhere), so choleric that His soverign will will always be done according to His marvelous plan to bring us to Himself to the praise of His glorious name!

Mountains of Edom

Reflections on Obadiah

How does God look upon Edom? Why?
God looked upon Edom with despise and disdain because of his pride, his inaction while his brother is plundered, his participation over the ruin and misfortune of the house of Jacob by gloating and rejoicing over their calamity, even handing them over to their enemy.

The things in which the people of Edom put their confidence:
Their ‘lofty dwelling’, allies, their wise and mighty men.

What will be their punishment? On what basis? (Gen 25:19-34)
The punishment of Edom will be that they will be completely obliterated, even by their own allies! God had already foretold before their birth and declared his love for Jacob, and that Esau (Edom) will serve Jacob. As it turned out, it was Esau who despised his birthright as the eldest son and lost his inheritance over some bread and stew. Edom (descendants of Esau) was going against God’s expressed will by participating in the violence against the descendants of Jacob.

What should be your attitude toward the disaster of other people (even those who have wronged you) and other nations?
Do not stand aloof and do nothing (v11), do not gloat, rejoice or boast over their ruins(v12), do not loot - take advantage of the situation and make some quick money (v13), do not assist in making their suffering worst (v14).

Contrast Edom’s future with the promises given to God’s people.
Following the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Edomites totally disappeared from history.
In contrast, God’s people shall inherit no less than the kingdom of God!

List the attributes of God which Obadiah’s vision revealed.
God will avenge his people eventually, His words will stand, He is faithful to his people, His kingdom will one day come in its fullness.

“the kingdom shall be the LORD’S”—The prophecy of Obadiah ends on this note of triumph. The final kingdom of peace under the Messiah will come to Jerusalem (Daniel 2:44; 7:14, 27; Zechariah 14:9; Luke 1:33; Revelation 11:15; 19:6). (Illumina)