Saturday, April 4, 2015

Last Day of Lent: What's Your Response?



So it's been 40 days. 40 blogs. I'm a little shocked that I was able to keep with this. If you'll recall on the first day of lent, I was very non-committal to this blogging thing:

"Part of my Lent plan is to go through a Bible Gateway reading plan: Daily Reading for Personal Growth, 40 Days with God. And maybe...sometimes (not committing to every day) write a blog about it."

But I wrote a blog every day. I am happy that I stuck with it. But...I know one thing is for sure: not everyone likes my blogs. I can't assert that everything in my blog is the truth (though I think it is while I'm writing it). But when you hear something; when someone tells you something, you generally have two choices about how you respond to it:
  • Accept it as the truth
  • Reject it as the truth
As a human being, there are a lot of truths that I have rejected (e.g. "He's just not that into you."). And there are a lot of lies that I have accepted (e.g. " You can't do it" "That's just not how life works" "You're not good enough," etc., etc.). It's hard to know what to accept and what to reject because TONS of information flows at us all the time. And sometimes new information contradicts old information (that we believed in) and how do we deal with that? The same way. All information is either (1) accepted or (2) rejected, and the gospel of peace is the same way. Today's scripture is really long (Acts 13:42 - 52) and so I'm going to sample a little bit:

 As Paul and Barnabas were going out, the people kept begging that these things might be spoken to them the next Sabbath...The next Sabbath nearly the whole city assembled to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began contradicting the things spoken by Paul, and were blaspheming. Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first; since you repudiate it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us,

‘I have placed You as a light for the Gentiles,
That You may bring salvation to the end of the earth.’”
When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed... 

I like the use of the word "began" in this passage. It is accentuated in the Bible, so it stood out to me. But the word "began" takes us back to the start. It's the birthplace of response.

This scriptures starts with Paul and Barnabas leaving the Jewish synagogue where they had just preached a rousing message. If you have time check out Acts 13:16-41; it's quick reading! In any case, the people hadn't processed what they heard yet, but they knew they wanted to hear it again. And so the next week everyone and their mother was at synagogue...including gentiles. Historically, Judaism has been for Jews. They are God's chosen people. It is to them that the promises of God were originally imparted, and so to see it opened up like this was a bit much. And so the Jews were filled with jealousy and began contradicting the gospel. Contradiction is a special type of rejection. It's a denial of a statement by asserting the opposite. And it's something they began to do. It wasn't happening all along.

And so Paul then basically told them they (in fact) had the right of first refusal. Just by virtue of birth. But now he was turning to the gentiles with this gospel message, and when they heard this they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. Gentiles previously had NO opportunity to rejoice in or glorify the word of the true God. Why? Because it wasn't available to them.

Two totally different responses. You have a gathering of people all in the same place, and some are cheering and others are booing. All to the same message. It's like the State of the Union address! Depending on where you're sitting good news is good news or good news is lies. But there's a point at which you begin.

And no matter where you are in life. If you've rejected Christ...or even if you've accepted Christ, I think you should begin again. Why? Because there's something amazing about the start. At the start, there is rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord. IF you start off on the foot that leads to that. Sometimes, my rejoicing gets quiet. And my glorifying gets quiet. Why? Because God's grace has been available to me for too long. Sometimes at the middle, we think we're at the end. And we lose our joy. Or sometimes right at the start we walk away and miss out on joy. But you can always go back to the start because:

And He that sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”- Revelation 21:5

You can be restored to the start line, because God's mercy is new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23) regardless of your response.

No comments:

Post a Comment